by Tom Clancy
Colonel Vatutin was irritable. He hadn’t slept well the previous night. Like most heavy drinkers, he needed a few drinks to sleep, and the excitement of the case added to the lack of a proper sedative had given him a fitful night of tossing and turning; it showed enough on his face to warn his team to keep their mouths shut.
“Camera,” he said curtly. A man came over and started photographing the pages of the diary as Vatutin turned them.
“Somebody’s tried to pick the door lock,” a major reported. “Scratches around the keyhole. If we dismantle the lock, I think we’ll see scratches on the tumblers also. Somebody’s probably been in here.”
“I have what they were after,” Vatutin said crossly. Heads turned throughout the apartment. The man checking the refrigerator popped off the front panel, looked underneath the appliance, then put the panel back in place after the interruption. “This man keeps a fucking diary! Doesn’t anybody read security manuals anymore?”
He could see it now. Colonel Filitov used personal diaries to sketch out official reports. Somehow, someone had learned this, and got into his flat to make copies of ...
But how likely is that? Vatutin asked himself. About as likely as a man who writes out his memories of official documents when he could just as easily copy them at his desk in the Defense Ministry.
The search took two hours, and the team left in ones and twos, after replacing everything exactly the way they’d found it.
Back at his office, Vatutin read the photographed diary in full. At the apartment he’d merely skimmed it. The fragment from the captured film exactly matched a page at the beginning of Filitov’s journal. He spent an hour going through the photographs of the pages. The data itself was impressive enough. Filitov was describing Project Bright Star in considerable detail. In fact, the old Colonel’s explanation was better than the brief he’d been given as part of the investigation directive. Tossed in were details of Colonel Bondarenko’s observations about site security and a few complaints on the way priorities were assigned at the Ministry. It was evident that both colonels were very enthusiastic about Bright Star, and Vatutin already agreed with them. But Minister Yazov, he read, was not yet sure. Complaining about funding problems—well, that was an old story, wasn’t it?
It was clear that Filitov had violated security rules by having records of top-secret documents in his home. That was itself a matter sufficiently serious that any junior or middle-level bureaucrat would lose his job for it, but Filitov was as senior as the Minister himself, and Vatutin knew all too well that senior people regarded security rules as inconveniences to be ignored in the Interest of the State, of which they viewed themselves as the ultimate arbiters. He wondered if the same were true elsewhere. Of one thing he was sure: before he or anyone else at KGB could accuse Filitov of anything, he needed something more serious than this. Even if Misha were a foreign agent—Why am I looking for ways to deny that? Vatutin asked himself in some surprise. He took himself back to the man’s flat, and remembered the photographs on the walls. There must have been a hundred of them: Misha standing atop the turret of his T-34, binoculars to his eyes; Misha with his men in the snows outside Stalingrad; Misha and his tank crew pointing to holes in the side armor of a German tank ... and Misha in a hospital bed, with Stalin himself pinning his third Hero of the Soviet Union medal to his pillow, his lovely wife and both children at his side. These were the memorabilia of a patriot and a hero.
In the old days that wouldn’t have mattered, Vatutin reminded himself. In the old days we suspected everyone.
Anyone could have scratched the door lock. He’d leaped to the assumption that it was the missing bath attendant. A former ordnance technician, he probably knew how. What if that is a coincidence?
But if Misha were a spy, why not photograph the official documents himself? In his capacity as aide to the Defense Minister, he could order up any documents he wanted, and smuggling a spy camera into the Ministry was a trivial exercise.
If we’d gotten the film with a frame from such a document, Misha would already be in Lefortovo Prison ...
What if he’s being clever? What if he wants us to think that someone else is stealing. material from his diary? I can take what I have to the Ministry right now, but we can accuse him of nothing more than violating in-house security rules, and if he answers that he was working at home, and admits to breaking the rule, and the Minister defends his aide—would the Minister defend Filitov?
Yes. Vatutin was sure of that. For one thing, Misha was a trusted aide and a distinguished professional soldier. For another, the Army would always close ranks to defend one of its own against the KGB. The bastards hate us worse than they hate the West. The Soviet Army had never forgotten the late 1930s, when Stalin had used the security agency to kill nearly every senior uniformed officer, and then as a direct result nearly lost Moscow to the German Army. No, if we go to them with no more than this, they’ll reject all our evidence and launch their own investigation with the GRU.
Just how many irregularities are going to show up in this case? Colonel Vatutin wondered.
Foley was wondering much the same thing in his cubbyhole a few miles away. He had had the film developed and was reading it over. He noted with irritation that CARDINAL had run out of film and hadn’t been able to reproduce the entire document. The part he had before him, however, showed that the KGB had an agent inside an American project that was called Tea Clipper. Evidently Filitov deemed this of more immediate interest to the Americans than what his own people were up to, and on reading the data, Foley was tempted to agree. Well. He’d get CARDINAL some more film cassettes, get the full document out, and then let him know that it was time to retire. The breakout wasn’t scheduled for another ten days or so. Plenty of time, he told himself despite a crawly feel at the back of his neck that was telling him something else.
For my next trick, how do we get the new film to CARDINAL? With the usual courier chain destroyed, it would take several weeks to establish a new one, and he didn’t want to risk a direct contact again.
It had to happen eventually, he knew. Sure, everything had gone smoothly the whole time he’d run this agent, but sooner or later something happened. Random chance, he told himself. Eventually the dice would come up the wrong way. When he’d first been assigned here and learned the operational history of CARDINAL, he’d marveled that the man had lasted so long, that he’d rejected at least three offers for breakout. How far could one man push his luck? The old bastard must have thought he was invincible. Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud, Foley thought.
He put it aside and continued with the task of the day. By evening, the courier was heading west with a new CARDINAL report.
“It’s on the way,” Ritter told the Director of Central Intelligence.
“Thank God.” Judge Moore smiled. “Now let’s concentrate on getting him the hell out of there.”
“Clark’s being briefed. He flies over to England tomorrow, and he meets the submarine the day after that.”
“That’s another one who’s pushed his luck,” the Judge observed.
“The best we got,” Ritter replied.
“It’s not enough to move with,” Vatutin told the Chairman after outlining the results of his surveillance and search. “I’m assigning more people to the operation. We’ve also placed listening devices in Filitov’s apartment—”
“And this other colonel?”
“Bondarenko? We were unable to get in there. His wife does not work and stays home all day. We learned today that the man runs a few kilometers every morning, and some additional men have been assigned to this case also. The only information we have at present is a clean record—indeed, an exemplary one—and a goodly portion of ambition. He is now the official Ministry representative to Bright Star, and as you see from the diary pages, an enthusiastic supporter of the project.”
“Your feeling for the man?” The Chairman’s questions were delivered in a curt but not menacing voic
e. He was a busy man who guarded his time.
“So far, nothing that would lead us to suspect anything. He was decorated for service in Afghanistan; he took command of a Spetznaz group that was ambushed and fought off a determined bandit attack. While at this Bright Star place, he upbraided the KGB guard force for laxness, but his formal report to the Ministry explained why, and it is hard to fault his reasons.”
“Is anything being done about it?” Gerasimov asked.
“The officer who was sent out to discuss the matter was killed in a plane crash in Afghanistan. Another officer will be sent out shortly, they tell me.”
“The bath attendant?”
“We are still looking for him. No results as yet. Everything is covered: airports, train stations, everything. If anything breaks, I’ll report to you immediately.”
“Very well. Dismissed, Colonel.” Gerasimov went back to the papers on his desk.
The Chairman of the Committee for State Security allowed himself a smile after Vatutin left. He was amazed at how well things were going. The masterstroke was the Vaneyeva matter. It wasn’t often that you uncovered a spy ring in Moscow, and when you did so, the congratulations were always mixed with the question: Why did it take you so long? That wouldn’t happen this time. No, not with Vaneyeva’s father about to be appointed to the Politburo. And Secretary Narmonov thought that he’d be loyal to the man who’d arranged the promotion. Narmonov, with all his dreams of reducing arms, of loosening the grip of the Party on the life of the nation, of “liberalizing” what had been bequeathed to the Party ... Gerasimov was going to change all that.
It wouldn’t be easy, of course. Gerasimov had only three firm allies on the Politburo, but among them was Alexandrov, the ideologue whom the Secretary had been unable to retire after he’d changed allegiance. And now he had another, one quite unknown to the Comrade General Secretary. On the other hand, Narmonov had the Army behind him.
That was a legacy of Mathias Rust, the German teenager who’d landed his rented Cessna in Red Square. Narmonov was a shrewd operator. Rust had flown into the Soviet Union on Border Guards Day, a coincidence that he could not explain—and Narmonov had denied KGB the opportunity to interrogate the hooligan properly! Gerasimov still growled about that. The young man had staged his flight on the only day in the year when one could be sure that the KGB’s vast force of border guards would be gloriously drunk. That had got him across the Gulf of Finland undetected. Then the air defense command, Voyska PVO, had failed to detect him, and the child had landed right in front of St. Basil’s!
General Secretary Narmonov had acted quickly after that: firing the chief of Voyska PVO and Defense Minister Sokolov after a stormy Politburo session where Gerasimov had been unable to raise any objections, lest he endanger his own position. The new Defense Minister, D. T. Yazov, was the Secretary’s man, a nobody from far down the numerical list of senior officers; a man who, having failed to earn his post, depended on the Secretary to stay there. That had covered Narmonov’s most vulnerable flank. The complication it added now was that Yazov was still learning his job, and he obviously depended on old hands like Filitov to teach it to him.
And Vatutin thinks that this is merely a counterespionage case, Gerasimov grunted to himself.
The security procedures that revolved around CARDINAL data precluded Foley from sending any information in the normal way. Even one-time-pad ciphers, which were theoretically unbreakable, were denied him. So the cover sheet on the latest report would warn the Δ fraternity that the data being dispatched wasn’t quite what was expected.
That realization lifted Bob Ritter right off his chair. He made his photocopies and destroyed the originals before walking to Judge Moore’s office. Greer and Ryan were already there.
“He ran out of film,” the DDO said as soon as the door was closed.
“What?” Moore asked.
“Something new came in. It seems that our KGB colleagues have an agent inside Tea Clipper who just gave them most of the design work on this new gollywog mirror gadget, and CARDINAL decided that that was more important. He didn’t have enough film left for everything, so he prioritized on what the KGB is up to. We only have half of what their laser system looks like.”
“Half might be enough,” Ryan observed. That drew a scowl. Ritter was not the least bit happy that Ryan was now Δ-cleared.
“He discusses the effects of the design change, but there’s nothing about the change itself.”
“Can we identify the source of the leak on our side?” Admiral Greer asked.
“Maybe. It’s somebody who really understands mirrors. Parks has to see this right quick. Ryan, you’ve actually been there. What do you think?”
“The test I watched validated the performance of the mirror and the computer software that runs it. If the Russians can duplicate it—well, we know they have the laser part down pat, don’t we?” He stopped for a moment. “Gentlemen, this is scary. If the Russians get there first, it blows away all the arms-control criteria, and it faces us with a deteriorating strategic situation. I mean, it would take several years before the problem manifests itself, but ...”
“Well, if our man can get another goddamned film cassette,” the Deputy Director for Operations said, “we can get to work on it ourselves. The good news is that this Bondarenko guy that Misha selected to run the laser desk at the Ministry will report to our man regularly on what’s happening. The bad news—”
“Well, we don’t have to go into that now,” Judge Moore said. Ryan didn’t need to know any of that, his eyes told Ritter, who nodded instant agreement. “Jack, you said you had something else?”
“There’s going to be a new appointment to the Politburo Monday—Ilya Arkadyevich Vaneyev. Age sixty-three, widower. One daughter, Svetlana, who works at GOSPLAN; she’s divorced, with one child. Vaneyev is a pretty straight guy, honest by their standards, not much in the way of dirty laundry that we know about. He’s moving up from a Central Committee slot. He’s the guy who took over the agricultural post that Narmonov held and did fairly well at it. The thinking is that he’s going to be Narmonov’s man. That gives him four full voting members of the Politburo who belong to him, one more than the Alexandrov faction, and—” He stopped when he saw the pained looks on the other three faces in the office. “Something wrong?”
“That daughter of his. She’s on Sir Basil’s payroll,” Judge Moore told him.
“Terminate the contract,” Ryan said. “It would be nice to have that kind of source, but that kind of scandal now would endanger Narmonov. Put her into retirement. Reactivate her in a few years, maybe, but right now shut her the hell off.”
“Might not be that easy,” Ritter said, and let it go at that. “How’s the evaluation coming?”
“Finished it yesterday.”
“It’s for the President’s eyes plus a few others, but this one’s going to be tightly held.”
“Fair enough. I can have it printed up this afternoon. If that’s all ... ?” It was. Ryan left the room. Moore watched the door close before speaking.
“I haven’t told anyone yet, but the President is concerned about Narmonov’s political position again. Ernie Allen is worried that the latest change in the Soviet position indicates a weakening in Narmonov’s support at home, and he’s convinced the boss that this is a bad time to push on a few issues. The implication of that is, if we bring CARDINAL out, well, it might have an undesired political effect.”
“If Misha gets caught, we get the same political effect,” Ritter pointed out. “Not to mention the slightly deleterious effect it’ll have on our man. Arthur, they are after him. They may have gotten to Vaneyev’s daughter already—”
“She’s back at work in GOSPLAN,” the DCI said.
“Yeah, and the man at the cleaners has disappeared. They got to her and broke her,” the DDO insisted. “We have to break him out once and for all. We can’t leave him flapping in the breeze, Arthur. We owe this man.”
“I cannot authoriz
e the extraction without presidential approval.”
Ritter came close to exploding. “Then get it! Screw the politics—in this case, screw the politics. There is a practical side to this, Arthur. If we let a man like this go down, and we don’t lift a finger to protect him, the word will get out—hell, the Russians’ll make a TV miniseries out of it! It will cost us more in the long term than this temporary political garbage.”
“Hold it for a minute,” Greer said. “If they broke this Party guy’s daughter, how come she’s back to work?”
“Politics?” Moore mused. “You suppose the KGB’s unable to hurt this guy’s family?”
“Right!” the DDO snorted. “Gerasimov’s in the opposing faction, and he’d pass the opportunity to deny a Politburo seat to Narmonov’s man? It smells like politics, all right, but not that kind. More likely our friend Alexandrov has the new boy in his back pocket and Narmonov doesn’t know about it.”
“So, you think they’ve broken her, but let her go and are using her as leverage on the old man?” Moore asked. “It does make sense. But there’s no evidence.”
“Alexandrov’s too old to go after the post himself, and anyway the ideologue never seems to get the top spot—more fun to play kingmaker. Gerasimov’s his fair-haired boy, though, and we know that he’s got enough ambition to have himself crowned Nicholas the Third.”
“Bob, you’ve just come up with another reason not to rock the boat right now.” Greer sipped at his coffee for a moment. “I don’t like the idea of leaving Filitov in place either. What are the chances that he can just lay low? I mean, the way things are set up, he might just talk his way out of anything they can bring against him.”