by Tom Clancy
Gerasimov nodded thoughtfully. “I see you used the new interrogation technique on this Vaneyeva woman. What do you think of it?”
“Interesting. Certainly it worked in this case, but I must say that I have misgivings about placing her back on the street.”
“That was my decision, in case no one told you,” Gerasimov said offhandedly. “Given the sensitivity of this case, and the doctor’s recommendation, I think that the gamble is one worth taking for the moment. Do you agree that we shouldn’t call too much attention to the case? Charges against her remain open.”
Oh, and you can use it against her father, can’t you? Her disgrace is his also, and what father would want to see his only child in the GULAG? Nothing like a little blackmail, is there, Comrade Chairman? “The case is certainly sensitive, and is likely to get more so,” Vatutin replied carefully.
“Go on.”
“The one time I saw this Altunin fellow, he was standing beside Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov.”
“Misha Filitov, Yazov’s aide?”
“The same, Comrade Chairman. I reviewed his file this morning.”
“And?” This question came from Vatutin’s boss.
“Nothing at all that I can point to. I hadn’t known of his involvement in the Penkovskiy case ...” Vatutin stopped, and for once his face showed something.
“Something is troubling you, Colonel,” Gerasimov observed. “What is it?”
“Filitov’s involvement in the Penkovskiy matter came soon after the death of his second son and his wife.” Vatutin shrugged after a moment. “An odd coincidence.”
“Wasn’t Filitov the first witness against him?” asked the head of the Second Directorate. He’d actually worked on the fringes of the case.
Vatutin nodded. “That’s right, but it was after we already had the spy under surveillance.” He stopped for another moment. “As I said, an odd coincidence. We are now after a suspected courier who was running defense data. I saw him standing next to a senior Defense Ministry official, who was involved in another similar case almost thirty years ago. On the other hand, Filitov was the man who first reported Penkovskiy, and he is a distinguished war hero ... who lost his family under unfortunate circumstances ...” It was the first time he had strung all his thoughts together.
“Has there ever been a hint of suspicion against Filitov?” the Chairman asked.
“No. His career could scarcely be more impressive. Filitov was the only aide who stayed with the late Minister Ustinov throughout his career, and he’s hung on there ever since. He functions as a personal inspector-general for the Minister.”
“I know,” Gerasimov said. “I have here a request over Yazov’s signature for our file on American SDI efforts. When I called about it, the Minister told me that colonels Filitov and Bondarenko are assembling data for a full report to the Politburo. The code word on that photographic frame you recovered was Bright Star, was it not?”
“Yes, Comrade Chairman.”
“Vatutin, we now have three coincidences,” Gerasimov observed. “Your recommendation?”
That was simple enough: “We should place Filitov under surveillance. Probably this Bondarenko fellow also.”
“Very carefully, but with the utmost thoroughness.” Gerasimov closed the file. “This is a fine report, and it would seem that your investigative instincts are as sharp as ever, Colonel. You will keep me posted on this case. I expect to see you three times a week from now until its conclusion. General,” he said to the head of “Two,” “this man will get all the support he needs. You may requisition resources from any part of the Committee. If you run into objections, please refer them to me. We may be certain that there is a leak at the highest level of the Defense Ministry. Next: this case is classified to my eyes and yours. No one—I repeat, no one will know of this. Who can say where the Americans have managed to place their agents? Vatutin, run this one to earth and you will have general’s stars by summer. But”—he held up a finger—“I think you should cease drinking until you are finished with this one. We need your head clear.”
“Yes, Comrade Chairman.”
The corridor was nearly empty outside the Chairman’s office when Vatutin and his boss left. “What about Vaneyeva?” the Colonel asked sotto voce.
“It’s her father, of course. General Secretary Narmonov will announce his election to the Politburo next week,” the General replied in a neutral, quiet voice.
And it won’t hurt to have another friend of the KGB at court, Vatutin thought to himself. Might Gerasimov be making some sort of move?
“Remember what he said about drinking,” the General said next. “I’ve heard that you’re hitting the bottle very hard of late. That’s one area of agreement between the Chairman and the General Secretary, in case no one ever told you.”
“Yes, Comrade General,” Vatutin replied. Of course, it’s probably the only area of agreement. Like any good Russian, Vatutin thought that vodka was as much a part of life as air. It occurred to him to note that his hangover had encouraged him to take steam that morning and notice the crucial coincidence, but he refrained from pointing out the irony involved. Back at his desk a few minutes later, Vatutin took out a pad and began planning the surveillance on two colonels of the Soviet Army.
Gregory took usual commercial flights home, changing planes at Kansas City after a two-hour layover. He slept through most of the transit and walked straight into the terminal without having to chase after any baggage. His fiancée was waiting for him.
“How was Washington?” she asked after the usual welcome-home kiss.
“Never changes. They ran me all over the place. I guess they figure scientific types don’t ever sleep.” He took her hand for the walk out to the car.
“So what happened?” she asked when they were outside.
“The Russians ran a big test.” He stopped to look around. This was a technical violation of security—but Candi was part of the team, wasn’t she? “They slagged down a satellite with the ground-based lasers at Dushanbe. What’s left looks like a plastic model that got put in the oven.”
“That’s bad,” Dr. Long observed.
“Sure is,” Dr. Gregory agreed. “But they have optical problems. Blooming and jitter both. It’s for sure they don’t have anybody like you over there to build mirrors. They must have some good folks on the laser end, though.”
“How good?”
“Good enough that they’re doing something we haven’t figured out yet,” Al grumped as they reached his Chevy. “You drive, I’m still a little dopey.”
“Will we figure it out?” Candi asked as she unlocked the door.
“Sooner or later.” He couldn’t go any further than that, fiancée or not.
Candi got in and reached to unlock the right-side door. As soon as Al was seated and strapped in, he opened the glove compartment and extracted a Twinkie. He always had a stash. It was a little stale, but he didn’t mind. Sometimes Candi wondered if his love for her resulted from the fact that her nickname reminded him of junk food.
“How’s work on the new mirror going?” he asked after snapping down half of the Twinkie.
“Marv has a new idea that we’re modeling out. He thinks we should thin out the coating instead of thickening it. We’re going to try it next week.”
“Marv’s pretty original for an old guy,” Al observed. Dr. Marv Greene was forty-two.
Candi laughed. “His secretary thinks he’s pretty original, too.”
“He should know better than to fool around with somebody at work,” Gregory said seriously. He winced a moment later.
“Yeah, honey.” She turned to look at him, and they both laughed. “How tired are you?”
“I slept on the flight.”
“Good.”
Just before reaching around her, Gregory crumbled the Twinkie wrapper and tossed it on the floor, where it joined about thirty others. He flew around quite a bit, but Candi had a sure cure for jet lag.
“Wel
l, Jack?” Admiral Greer asked.
“I’m worried,” Ryan admitted. “It was pure dumb luck that we saw the test. The timing was cute. All of our recon birds were well below the optical horizon. We weren’t supposed to notice—which is hardly surprising, since it’s a technical violation of the ABM treaty. Well, probably.” Jack shrugged. “Depends on how you read the treaty. Now you get into the ‘strict’ or ‘loose’ interpretation argument. If we pulled something like this, the Senate would go nuts.”
“They wouldn’t like the test that you saw.” Very few people knew how far along Tea Clipper was. The program was “black.” More classified than top secret, “black” programs simply did not exist.
“Maybe. But we were testing the aiming system, not an actual weapon.”
“And the Soviets were testing a system to see if it was—” Greer chuckled and shook his head. “It’s like talking metaphysics, isn’t it? How many lasers can dance on the head of a pin?”
“I’m sure Ernie Allen could give us an opinion on that.” Jack smiled. He didn’t agree with Allen, but he had to like the man. “I hope our friend in Moscow can deliver.”
12.
Success and Failure
ONE of the problems with surveillance of any individual is that one must determine how he or she spends an ordinary day before one can establish what resources are needed for the operation. The more solitary the person or the activity, the harder it generally is to keep a covert eye on him. Already, for example, the KGB officers trailing Colonel Bondarenko hated him thoroughly. His daily jogging routine was an ideal activity for a spy, they all thought. He ran about entirely alone on city streets that were largely vacant—vacant enough that everyone out at that time was undoubtedly known to him by sight, and vacant enough that he would immediately notice anything out of the ordinary. As he ran around the residential blocks in this part of Moscow, the three agents assigned to keep an eye on him lost visual contact with him no less than five times. The sparse trees they might hide behind were bare of leaves, and the apartment buildings stood like tombstones on flat, open land. In any of those five times, Bondarenko might have stopped to retrieve something from a dead-drop or could have made one himself. It was more than frustrating, and added to this was the fact that this Soviet Army Colonel had a service record that was as immaculate as a field of freshly fallen snow: exactly the cover that any spy would contrive to acquire for himself, of course.
They spotted him again turning the corner for home, his legs pumping vigorously, his breath marked in the air behind him as small clouds of vapor. The man in charge of this part of the case decided that half a dozen “Two” officers would be needed just to shadow the subject for his morning runs. And they’d have to be here an hour earlier than he was expected to run, enduring the dry, bitter cold of the Moscow dawn. People from the Second Chief Directorate never considered themselves fully appreciated for the hardships of their job.
Several kilometers away, another team of three was quite satisfied with their subject. In this case, an eighth-floor apartment in the building opposite the subject’s was obtained—the diplomat who lived there was abroad. A pair of telephoto lenses was focused on Misha’s windows, and he was not a man who troubled to lower his shades or even to adjust them properly. They watched him go through the morning routine of a man who’d had too much to drink the night before, and that was familiar enough to the “Two” men who watched in heated comfort from across the street.
Misha was also sufficiently senior at the Defense Ministry that he rated a car and driver. It was an easy thing to reassign the sergeant and to substitute a shiny young face fresh from the KGB’s counterintelligence school. A tap on his phone recorded his request for an early pickup.
Ed Foley left his apartment earlier than usual. His wife drove him over today, with the kids in the back of the car. The Soviet file on Foley noted with amusement that she kept the car on most days to run the kids around and generally socialize with the wives of other Western diplomats. A Soviet husband would keep the car for his own use. At least she wasn’t making him take the Metro today, they observed; decent of her. The militiaman at the entrance to the diplomatic compound—he was really KGB, as everyone knew—noted the time of departure and the occupancy of the car. It was slightly out of the ordinary, and the gate guard looked around to see if Foley’s KGB shadow was here today. He wasn’t. The “important” Americans got much more regular surveillance.
Ed Foley had a Russian-style fur hat, and his overcoat was sufficiently old and worn that it didn’t look terribly foreign. A wool scarf clashed slightly with it, protecting his neck and hiding his striped tie. The Russian security officers who knew him by sight noted that, as with most foreigners, local weather was the great equalizer. If you lived through a Russian winter, you soon started dressing and acting like a Russian, even to the point of looking slightly downward when you walked.
First the kids were dropped off at school. Mary Pat Foley drove normally, her eyes flicking back and forth to the mirror every three or four seconds. Driving here wasn’t all that bad, compared to American cities. Although Russian drivers could do the most extraordinary things, the streets weren’t terribly crowded, and having learned to drive in New York City, she could handle nearly anything. As with commuters all over the world, she had a route composed of indirect shortcuts that avoided the handful of traffic bottlenecks and saved a few minutes each day at the cost of an extra liter or two of benzin.
Immediately after turning a corner, she moved expertly to the curb and her husband hopped out. The car was already moving as he slammed the door shut and moved off, not too quickly, toward the side entrance of the apartment block. For once Ed Foley’s heart was beating fast. He’d done this only once before and didn’t like it at all. Once inside, he avoided the elevators and bounded up the eight flights of stairs, looking at his watch.
He didn’t know how his wife did it. It pained his male ego to admit that she drove so much more precisely than he did, and could place her car at any spot she wished with an accuracy of five seconds, plus or minus. He had two minutes to get to the eighth floor. Foley accomplished it with seconds to spare. He opened the fire door, and anxious eyes scanned the corridor. Wonderful things, corridors. Especially the straight, bare ones in high-rise apartment buildings. Nowhere for people to lurk with their cameras, with a bank of elevators in the middle, and fire stairs at both ends. He walked briskly past the elevators, heading toward the far end. He could measure the time with his heartbeats now. Twenty yards ahead, a door opened, and a man in uniform came out. He turned to set the lock on his apartment door, then picked up the briefcase and headed toward Foley. A passerby, if there had been one, might have thought it odd that neither man moved to avoid the other.
It was over in an instant. Foley’s hand brushed against CARDINAL’S, taking the film cassette and passing back a tiny rolled slip of paper. He thought he noted a look of irritation in the agent’s eyes, but nothing more than that, not even a “Please excuse me, Comrade,” as the officer continued toward the elevators. Foley walked straight into the fire stairs. He took his time going down.
Colonel Filitov emerged from the building at the appointed time. The sergeant holding the door of his car noted that his mouth was working on something, perhaps a crumb of bread caught between his teeth.
“Good morning, Comrade Colonel.”
“Where’s Zhdanov?” Filitov asked as he got in.
“He took ill. An appendix, they think.” This drew a grunt.
“Well, move off. I want to take steam this morning.”
Foley came out of the building’s back entrance a minute later and walked past two other apartment blocks as he made his way to the next street over. He was just reaching the curb when his wife pulled over, picked him up almost without stopping. Both took a few deep breaths as she headed toward the embassy.
“What are you doing today?” she asked, her eyes still checking the mirror.
“The usual,” was the
resigned reply.
Misha was already in the steam room. He noted the absence of the attendant and the presence of a few unfamiliar faces. That explained the special pickup this morning. His face gave nothing away as he traded a few friendly words with the regulars. It was a pity that he’d run out of film in his camera. Then there was the warning from Foley. If he were under surveillance again—well, every few years some security officer or other would get a bug up his ass and recheck everyone at the Ministry. CIA had noticed and broken up the courier chain. It was amusing, he thought, to see the look on that young man’s face in the corridor. So few people were left who knew what combat was like. People were so easy to frighten. Combat taught a man what to fear and what to ignore, Filitov told himself.
Outside the steam room, a “Two” man was riffling through Filitov’s clothing. In the car, his briefcase was being searched. In each case, the job was done quickly and thoroughly.
Vatutin himself supervised the search of Filitov’s apartment. It was a job for experts whose hands were in surgical gloves, and they spent much of their time looking for “tell-tales.” It could be the odd scrap of paper, a crumb, even a single human hair placed in a specific spot whose removal would tell the man who lived in the flat that somebody had been here. Numerous photographs were taken and rushed off for developing, and then the searchers went to work. The diary was found almost at once. Vatutin leaned down to look at the simple book that sat openly in the desk drawer to be sure that its placement wasn’t secretly marked. After a minute or two, he picked it up and started reading.