Code Name: Kalistrat

by Arno Baker

  Roosevelt nodded with interest and fit a camel into his cigarette holder as Hoover went on.

  “Signor Errera is requesting a visa to come to the United States and has been in contact with our legation in Montevideo. He offered this document to our special agent in Uruguay saying it was absolutely authentic and bears Mussolini’s own unmistakable handwritten annotations. Presumably the Duce had read the text which was then placed in a temporary file and stolen before it could be archived.”

  “Yes, that would make sense. Such things can happen easily enough, don’t you think Edgar?”

  “Regrettably, I must agree with you Mr. President.”

  “So, is there more to the story or…”

  “Yes, actually regarding the document’s origins: the author of the report is Giuseppe Bastianini, the under secretary for foreign affairs. Mrs. Sarfatti according to Mr. Errera, claims that the source is acting with Mussolini’s approval and that the Duce is so confident these plans will succeed that he is even privately making light of the Axis disaster in Tunisia. He’s been repeating that it makes no difference because soon they will have all the men they need to take back whatever has been lost in Africa.”

  Roosevelt narrowed his eyes at Hoover as he still felt unsure whether the document was real or a hoax. He remained unconvinced.

  “That sounds rather unlikely from my point of view. But we need to know whether or not Mrs. Sarfatti is an Italian agent on a mission to deceive us. That has a lot to do with this report, whether it is authentic or shall we say, authentic enough to cause a deception.”

  The president continued to read and after a few more pages stopped and said.

  “Edgar, I see that this is a purely military issue rather than one of counter intelligence. I need to hold on to this paper for a few days. Thank you for coming up here, I can assure you it is most helpful and very much appreciated. I’ll see you next Tuesday then, as usual.”

  “My pleasure, Mr. President.”

  Hoover took his briefcase and promptly left the room. A car was waiting to drive him to Penn Station where he boarded a train back to the nation’s capital. The director was a bit disappointed at being once again excluded from the president’s further probes but then his task was limited to providing political and occasionally military counter intelligence out of Latin America. Had he been given the mission to cover world in the same manner, as he had requested, he would have probably been asked to stay overnight at Hyde Park.

  As soon as Hoover left the presidential study, FDR read the memorandum over again slowly and began taking a few notes on a separate pad. It was a very disturbing document and the situation it described held the greatest threat to the entire Anglo-American war effort. This was indeed a possibility that he and Churchill had been constantly discussing from the beginning, but always under the tightest secrecy. Now the possibility had suddenly become real, and it was staring at them across those typed lines. Roosevelt’s first impulse was to summon Harry Hopkins who was working in the next room but he quickly opted against it. ‘Harry the Hop’ as he affectionately called him, was so eager to please and ingratiate himself that he was much more valuable as a good will courier to Churchill and Stalin. Brilliant as he was Harry would need an entirely new script for a role that was beyond his repertoire.

  FDR summoned General William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan instead. As luck would have it the general had just returned from a long trip to the Middle East and was at his New York apartment when Grace Tully called. He reached Hyde Park four hours later driving at top speed with his bodyguard. It was past midnight when he arrived and he was given a room at the Vanderbilt mansion until he could see the president at an early breakfast the next morning.

  Once he had read the report, Donovan assured FDR that he would discreetly get OSS analysts to determine whether the document was authentic. But Roosevelt was very nervous about OSS security and repeated several times to the general that the ‘need to know’ on this matter had to be very strictly limited. Donovan said he understood thinking that FDR was insisting rather heavily on that issue for reasons he didn‘t quite grasp. Suddenly Roosevelt asked Donovan to leave the room as he placed a transatlantic call on the scrambler to Churchill.

  “Too bad you’re not here, we could do some great fishing together!”

  “Ah, my friend it is a pity indeed.”

  “I’m sending Bill [Donovan] over to see you. Listen to what he has to say first, then we should talk.”

  “Perfectly fine, I look forward to his coming to this country!”

  Donovan flew out the next day and reached Portsmouth by Pan American Clipper some twenty-two hours later.

  The Prime Minister welcomed him at Whitehall where they went into a private meeting room. The same scenario unfolded, with Churchill reading the pages one after the other and occasionally looking at the original and examining the annotations attributed to Mussolini. He then summoned the head of MI6 Sir Stewart Menzies, best known as “C”. It was decided to bring in two other specialists of Axis and Italian matters and in particular Ivone Kirkpatrick who within minutes of looking carefully at the document was able to state unequivocally:

  “Gentlemen, Mr. Churchill, in my view this document is authentic and the annotations by Mussolini are indeed genuine. As to the content I believe it will require further analysis by MI6 and the F. O. staff.”

  The matter was discussed for several hours in a briefing by “C” meant for Churchill and Donovan.

  “Mussolini is known to have been actively lobbying for an armistice on the Eastern front. He has the support and encouragement of the Japanese. Hitler has doggedly resisted any such move hoping to still crush the Red Army. As you know Stalin initiated several attempts at a negotiated peace in October 1941 and February 1942. But since the German losses at Stalingrad, the largely unsuccessful tank battles in Central Russia, and the requests by the German Navy for access to the oil fields of the Middle East, German strategic thinking and direction must change. Russian military analysts clearly believe that Germany remains a tremendous military threat.

  The huge losses inflicted on the Nazi armies have actually only evened the playing field. The Russians view a pursuit of the war as being extremely costly with millions of Soviet casualties and unbearably heavy civilian losses. But now it is Hitler who is about to offer Stalin a novel idea with an olive branch: a secret armistice in place, whereby the actual fighting would end but no armistice announcement would be made nor would there be any spectacular troop movements, only a gradual reduction. This is meant to allow Russia to continue receiving Lend Lease shipments as it officially honors the alliance with the United States and Great Britain until Germany moves its best troops to the west to invade North Africa, overrun Palestine and take the Mesopotamian and Persian oil fields. The expected time frame should be six to eight months. At that point Russia would formally break with the Allies, draw up new borders with the Germans, implement an anti-Semitic extermination policy similar to Hitler’s and join the Axis six months after that.”

  Donovan looked at the Prime Minister who appeared to be in shock as he took afew nervous puffs on a long cigar and sipped a glass of cognac. Then he said in a deep voice,

  “In other words my dear General Donovan, such a scenario would result in a major catastrophe! Similar I may add to what almost took place in 1918 after Brest Litovsk. I shall have to discuss this entire matter with your president promptly. I am to travel to Washington in ten days. It shall be on top of my agenda, believe me!”

  “The President is understandably worried and wishes to coordinate a strategy…”

  “C” intervened to say,

  “If this is a deception, then we can easily find out. If on the other hand it is true, then we must provide a counter deception to destroy it.”

  “Well put, Sir Stewart! Proceed with haste!” replied Churchill.

  Donovan immediately journeyed back to Portsmouth to board the next Clipper flight to New York. Within twenty-four hours he was i
n the White House where Roosevelt went right to the point, “I will be covering all this with the Prime Minister. We must increase our efforts, whatever it takes, to keep Stalin and his 350 plus divisions in the war and on our side. He must be made to realize that he’ll stand to gain far more with us than from the unstable and blood thirsty Adolf... Stalin, whatever his other faults may be, is an intelligent and realistic man. He knows that with the Allies he can be rid of Hitler for good and make substantial gains that he can keep. But for that he must also behave and play straight with us.

  A victorious Hitler would never cease to be a menace in the future and we can bet that he would turn on his old foe once more if he conquered the Middle East. So Uncle Joe really has no choice but since he remains fundamentally a revolutionary and a bandit—as Bill Bullitt likes to remind me—he will play all the cards he possesses for every cent they are worth. I know, because if I were in his shoes I’d do exactly the same thing.”

  XI

  Winston Churchill and FDR were sitting alone under the thick foliage on the banks of a lively creek filled with fresh water trout, high in the Maryland hills overlooking the Gettysburg battlefield in the distance. The inside joke was that the secret service would make sure the president and his guests would inevitably return with a basketful of easy catches. So the agents were posted upstream with buckets of live trout which they periodically dumped to swim and get caught downstream. The prime minister was smoking his usual long cigar and the cascading sound of the waterfall prevented anyone from accidentally hearing their conversation.

  “Mr. President, what Donovan showed me was quite disturbing, I must say, especially after my experts assured me that it is unimpeachably authentic.”

  Roosevelt was carefully handling a fishing rod as he sat uncomfortably on a portable chair placed slightly higher than the British statesman.

  “We have reached the same conclusion and it is corroborated by many other pieces of information we have received around the same time. The real issue is: what the hell should we do about it? You and I know what the consequences of such a move would be. We must be sure that Stalin doesn’t get any funny ideas about our commitment to Russia: the second front, the requested increases in lend lease and so on. As long as there is no clash with our vital interests of course.”

  Roosevelt wasn’t looking in Churchill‘s direction and remained focused almost unnaturally on his fishing rod.

  “The prospect of two hundred plus German divisions suddenly invading North Africa and the Near East is too catastrophic to contemplate. And assuming Stalin keeps his promise to join the Axis side as the document implies, well then it becomes a different war altogether. The vital interests of the British Empire and the United States are indissolubly linked by everything that brings us together right now, wouldn’t you say Mr. President?”

  Roosevelt was waiting for the imperial angle which his British counterpart always brought into any substantive discussion.

  “For now I must agree but we have to take some very clear and unequivocal steps and can’t wait around much longer.”

  At that point both men paused as a secret serviceman appeared with a photographer in a Signal Corps uniform who quickly took a few snapshots of the two leaders relaxing in the forest. The interruption almost caught them by surprise although it was a common occurrence at any one of their meetings. Roosevelt waited patiently for the pictures to be taken then once the photographer disappeared, he went on,

  “First we increase lend lease shipping and cut all the red tape the Russians find so vexing; second we relax FBI surveillance of their activities, at least the less intrusive ones, they complain to the State Department periodically so that’s an area where we can do something positive immediately. Finally, we can both muzzle the Polish government in London and soften their anti-Soviet stance. Some of this will be painful but it is a start.”

  Churchill thought for a moment then asked:

  “Well, I also think that you should see Mr. Stalin sooner rather than later.”

  “I think so too. We must have a meeting as quickly as possible.”

  Churchill nodded and smiled as FDR’s fishing rod moved slightly and a trout was energetically pulled out of the water wiggling furiously.

  The first change was implemented one week later in the form of a top-secret internal memo from Director J. Edgar Hoover ordering all FBI counter espionage teams to reduce or relax their surveillance of Soviet diplomats and known agents unless they were already seriously compromised. It was at that point that Anderson pulled Murphy and his men off Soviet surveillance and switched them to the virtually moribund German Abwehr and half extinct Italian SIM targets not to mention the handful of Japanese agents still operating in the United States.

  Feklisov thought for a moment as Irina stood ready at her keyboard. Finally he said,

  “Everything suddenly took a sharp turn and our almost relaxed routine changed on the day Julius told me about Los Alamos. Until then his main job was to provide us with as much engineering information about weaponry as possible. It was a task he performed to perfection and had created a vast network where he was running as many as 8 to 10 agents himself. It was fairly a simple matter: recruit engineers from a pool of former classmates at City College and their friends; get them to provide or photograph blueprints and documents and hand us the film. His great skill was in organizing that network of specialists and making sure none of those amateurs was exposed. Then one fine day he found out about New Mexico.”

  Irina was typing at full speed and suddenly stopped,

  “Did you know about that in advance?”

  “We had been asked, or at least I was, to explain the vast expenditures the Americans were making at certain facilities. I assume most of the other XY Line NKVD officers were also ordered to find out about the new weapons the Americans were working on around the country. The GRU was active parallel to us. Obviously the Center knew the main locations: Chicago, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos but they didn‘t know exactly what was going on inside, just that it was all top secret and highly sophisticated. They had other informers but they needed more information for corroboration and simple coverage since so many activities of vital importance were spread out over enormous distances and going on simultaneously. The most mysterious location to us was the vast complex in the desert in New Mexico.

  One evening at a restaurant Julius suddenly told me,

  “My brother in law is in the army and has just been posted as a machinist to the military research facility in New Mexico…Los Alamos. Is that of any interest to you?”

  He asked this very innocently mind you, realizing only as he went along how important the facility actually was. My problem was that David Greenglass, Ethel‘s younger brother, was barely 21 years old. In spite of his strong opinions in favor of the USSR, he wasn’t ready for the kind of commitment required for secret work. I told Julius as much after some discussion with Yatskov and Kvasnikov. We debated the issue. It came down to the importance the Center attached to having one more source inside since we did have others, although I didn’t know how many at the time. By urgent encrypted cable Kvasnikov immediately received the green light from Semyonov and Ovakimian! He barged in on me one evening with a written note which he shoved into my hand,

  “The brother-in-law recruitment is approved.” He was clearly enthusiastic because Moscow was jubilant. I suspect it was because of an impasse in the development of the Soviet bomb in the fall of 1944.”

  Irina looked up when he paused and asked,

  “You were excited as well?”

  “Yes, I understood the importance of an effort that was mobilizing such gigantic resources even though I didn‘t understand the scientific data. I knew about the other atomic spies: McNutt in particular and Nunn May but also Klaus Fuchs. I would later work with Fuchs as his case officer in England. It came down to convincing Julius and that was the simplest thing in the world! He always wanted to do more even when he was overloaded with agents.

&nb
sp; When I told him that he could go ahead, he devised a whole strategy to bring Greenglass into the operation by using his wife Ethel. This was a very tricky point and one we did not fully understand at the time. There was the older sister relationship of Ethel to David, her baby brother, who as a boy was considered a bloated klutz. On top of that there was Ruth who was such an argumentative and strong influence on her husband harboring more than a little resentment toward Ethel’s bossy ‘I know best’ approach to her brother. Those tensions were to surface long before the arrest and at the trial.”

  Irina typed at full speed sensing that this was a key moment in the story.

  Part Two

  Atomic Espionage

  XII

  On a warm Sunday evening in mid-September 1944, Julius and Ethel were entertaining Ethel‘s younger brother, David Greenglass and his wife Ruth for dinner. Young Robert Rosenberg who was already in his pajamas and supposed to be in bed was mesmerized by his uncle‘s sparkling new army uniform. Julius was growing impatient with the hyperactive boy:

  “Ok, Robert, it’s time for bed. Say good night to Uncle David and Aunt Ruth and run along.”

  “But Daddy I just wanted to…”

  “Come on Robert, do as Daddy says, be a good boy.” Injected Ethel in her sweet but firm voice.

  “Well ok, I guess…”

  Robert said good night and then hugged his father for a long time who finally picked him up and carried him to his bedroom. Everybody smiled. After a few minutes Julius returned.

  “He’s very excited and wanted me to tell him a story. Fortunately he immediately fell asleep, lucky him!”