‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to help about that: not immediately anyway,’ said Kapalet. ‘But I think I’ve got something better.’
‘There couldn’t be anything better,’ said the American, disappointed.
Kapalet gazed around, apparently to check that they were unobserved, and handed Drew the plastic carrier he held.
‘What is it?’ asked Drew.
‘Part of an internal security investigation,’ disclosed Kapalet, as he had been instructed by Belov. ‘It’s creating absolute pandemonium at headquarters. It’s all in Russian, obviously, so you’ll have to get it translated to make your own assessment. I think it’s dynamite.’
Dynamite was actually the word Langley used in the cable of congratulation to Drew, within twelve hours of the dossiers arriving in the diplomatic pouch. The cable also said he’d been promoted two grades, which meant a salary increase of $2,000 a year. Drew conceded Moscow had some advantages, after all.
John Willick knew himself well enough to accept he would not have the courage unaided, so he queued at various liquor stores, hoarding the vodka. He bought the cheapest, because he guessed he’d need a lot, and when he tried it before the real attempt, a sort of rehearsal to ensure everything would go right, its harshness caught his breath, making him cough. Which in itself was a useful test because it meant he’d have to take his time, drinking it.
He chose a Friday night because there was no debriefing on a Saturday, so no drivers would be calling for him. There were six bottles and he lined them up like pins in a bowling alley, starting from the left. The alcohol burned at first, making his eyes water, but it was easier once he became accustomed to it. He didn’t feel drunk at all after the first bottle and worried he might not have collected enough, but his head began to go before he reached the end of the second, so he knew it would be all right. He began to belch so he stopped drinking for a few moments, not wanting to risk losing the effect by vomiting.
Willick decided he was ready halfway through the third bottle. He felt quite rational – knew exactly what he was doing – but there was no nervousness, none of the usual snatch in the guts.
He’d bought the rope on another shopping expedition, thick, heavy-duty stuff that he’d tested to carry his weight by hanging from it by his hands, looped around the curtain support which was high enough for the purpose. He’d assembled it and prepared the knots before he’d started drinking and moved the chair over now, needing it to climb up. He tugged, needlessly, ensuring the strength again and slipped the noose over his head, hesitating at the very last moment. And then he kicked the chair away.
He was even unsuccessful in killing himself properly. He’d tried to get the knot behind his ear, the way he’d thought it was done, but it slipped around so his neck didn’t break, killing him instantly as it should have done. He choked to death, instead. It took twenty minutes for him to die, ten of them conscious and in agony.
38
From the moment he entered the now familiar debriefing room at Langley, Levin was aware of an apparent but inexplicable attitude between the three men with whom he had spent so much time. Lightness was the word that came to his mind, but he dismissed it because it had to be wrong.
‘We’ve made some assessments, from what you’ve told us. Compared it against the defection of Willick,’ announced Myers.
Levin wondered how Willick was being treated in Russia. Cautiously he said: ‘I’m glad if I have helped.’
‘You’ve been invaluable,’ said Crookshank.
‘And we’re anxious for you to go on helping,’ said Norris.
Levin controlled any reaction. He said: ‘Of course.’
‘We are offering you the position of a contract consultant with the CIA,’ announced Myers. ‘In effect you will be permanently employed.’
Levin was not concerned at his difficulty in immediately replying because they would expect him to be surprised. Forcing himself to speak, the Russian said: ‘I would be delighted to accept.’
‘And we would be delighted for you to be with us here at Langley,’ said Crookshank, critic-turned-supporter.
‘Welcome to the CIA,’ endorsed Myers.
‘I hope to be very useful here,’ said Levin, a remark for his own enjoyment, the only celebration he could allow.
‘What will it involve?’ asked Galina, that night, when he made the announcement back in Connecticut.
‘Moving to the Washington area, I suppose,’ said Levin. ‘Being able to get a house of our own, instead of living like we do here: in a goldfish bowl.’
Petr, who was in the same room as his father, accepted it was time that he made his move. Which he did the following day. It coincided with Yuri Malik’s arrival at Kennedy Airport, after a circuitous flight through Canada.
Petr’s escape went as smoothly as he had known it would. He waited thirty minutes after being deposited at school and then complained of feeling unwell. He rejected the offer of the school recalling his car and was walking up Litchfield’s North Street before the hour was out. The lack of public transport was a minimal problem, because the first lift he picked up was going all the way to Naugatuck and from his map and timetable Petr knew there was a station there. He caught a train just after eleven, settling in a corner seat, bunched with excitement at what he had already done and in expectation of what he would soon be doing. Would they have him make some immediate public denunciation of his father? Or want to interview him at length first, to find out what had happened since their defection? Whatever, the boy decided: he’d do whatever he was asked. And enjoy it. God how he was going to enjoy it! His voluntary return showed he had no part in the defection and certainly Natalia hadn’t: important to make it clear that his mother was not involved, either. He could remember how bewildered she had been, that night at the Plaza. Only his father: his father the bastard. Puffed with imagined importance, boasting of some consultancy or job with the CIA: soon to be taught a lesson, though. His father would know something to be wrong, when he wasn’t there to be picked up from school that evening. Served him right. Bastard.
Petr mentally ticked the stations off his list, each one bringing him closer to New York, excitement building on excitement. He was free! In complete realization Petr decided the Connecticut house with its armed guards and suspended helicopters had been as much a prison keeping them in as a safe house keeping pursuers out. Hadn’t kept him in, though: he’d beaten them. They’d never suspected him; didn’t have a clue. He laughed openly, in the carriage, stifling the outburst at once to avoid drawing attention to himself. How surprised they’d be! What else? Angry, of course. Frightened, too. He hoped so much they’d be frightened, not knowing what he would do. What to do themselves. He wanted them to be frightened: his father particularly.
Old Greenwich, he saw. Only fourteen more stops and only then if they halted at each one. He consulted his timetable and saw that they didn’t: bypassed six. And from the schedule he calculated they were precisely on time for the noon arrival. Ten minutes, down 42nd Street and he would be there! Less than two hours. The expectation built up and he shifted impatiently in his seat.
The problem came to him abruptly and there was a twitch of annoyance that it had not occurred to him before. The United Nations was not a public place: certainly there were public tours but they were tightly controlled so he would not be able to walk in and roam the building until he found a Soviet delegate he could ask for help. There were guards who would demand his accreditation: and they would be Americans, who could intercept him and warn Proctor or Bowden or someone and get him hauled back to Connecticut. The resolve came, as quickly as the problem, and Petr smiled to himself again, pleased with the way he was thinking. Nothing was going to stop him: nothing could.
At the cavernous, echoing Grand Central terminal Petr found the telephone bank by the exit on to 42nd Street and politely, in English, requested the number of the Soviet delegation. He was confused when the telephonist demanded a reason, blurting without th
ought that he wanted information, which was how he came to be given the extension not of the delegation he sought but the public affairs department.
The call was taken, by further coincidence, by Inya who since that failed night had spread the story of Yuri’s impotence through the department. When Petr repeated his request she signalled to Yuri that it was for him.
‘You are Russian?’ asked Petr, still in English.
‘Yes.’
The boy switched immediately to their own language. ‘I am the son of Yevgennie Pavlovich Levin,’ he announced. ‘I was forced to go with my father. I want to return, to expose him.’
Yuri was astonished, for the first few seconds completely unable to respond. In Russian, too, he said: ‘Where are you?’
‘New York. I have escaped. I want to come in but I know I will be stopped without the proper documentation.’
Could it be a trick, some trap being set by the FBI or the CIA who had become suspicious of Levin? Yuri said: ‘Where have you been held?’
‘Connecticut,’ said the boy at once.
‘What was the nearest town?’
‘Litchfield. I was attending school there.’
That checks out: I know it checks out, thought Yuri. Other impressions tumbled in upon him, the most important being the recollection of Vladislav Belov only twenty-four hours earlier describing to him a KGB operation regarded as the most brilliant ever conceived. He said: ‘Whereabouts in New York?’
‘Grand Central.’
The right station, Yuri recognized. If it were Petr Levin on the telephone the last place in New York – in the world – where he could publicly reappear was at the UN. Where then? No time to plan or prepare, like any encounter should be planned and prepared. He said: ‘Do not come here. I will come to you.’
‘To the station?’
It was as good a place as any, decided Yuri. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Just wait in the main concourse.’
‘How will I recognize you?’
‘I’ll recognize you,’ assured Yuri.
To walk was the quickest way and it enable Yuri a few moments to try to rationalize what was happening. The first consideration had to be the personal risk in going to meet the boy at all. Very little, accepted Yuri. None, in fact. It would be quite understandable for someone attached to the Soviet delegation to go to see a member of a defector’s family seeking help. More suspicious to refuse, in fact. So where could the danger lie? That it was the trick he’d already considered, an attempt either by the CIA or the FBI to check the genuineness of the father’s defection. How? He couldn’t know that until they’d talked. What other danger? The greatest of all was that it were Petr Levin, that he was disaffected and by doing what he had done risked destroying a KGB infiltration that had taken years to evolve.
Yuri did not enter through the 42nd Street entrance but off Lexington, so that he was at the top of the stairs, high above the main concourse. He saw Petr Levin at once. The boy was walking back and forth at the very centre, behind the ticket queues, concentrating upon the 42nd Street doorway through which he expected his contact to enter. But Yuri was not looking for that sort of concentration. The boy hadn’t been trained. If this were something set up he’d be accompanied and, amateur that he was, there’d be some indication, glances or smiles for reassurance. There was nothing. Yuri could not isolate, either, anyone obviously keeping Petr under observation but in a place with so many people that was practically impossible.
Yuri descended the stairs, went straight up to the youth and said: ‘How can I help you, Petr Yevgennovich?’
‘Who are you?’
The person you spoke to on the telephone.’
‘I want to come back. To Russia. To my sister,’ declared the boy simply.
It was too crowded, too bustling, for there to be any sensible sort of conversation. Through the doors Yuri saw the Howard Johnson snack bar on the opposite side of the road and said: ‘Let’s sit down and talk.’
Petr Levin needed no prompting. Ignoring the coffee Yuri bought to justify their occupation of the booth, the boy poured out an uninterrupted diatribe against his father. The most frequently used word was hate. He hated his father for the abandonment of Natalia and he hated the man for forcing him to defect and he hated him for betraying his country. It all appeared to be utterly sincere, without any indication of rehearsal or training for which Yuri was constantly attentive.
‘So what do you want to do?’ asked Yuri.
‘Come back to Russia. And something more.’
‘What?’
‘Expose my father for what he’s done. And what he’s going to do. Utterly destroy him.’
The potential trap, guaged Yuri. At last! It was normal to vilify a traitor and to be able to do so through his son – with an abandoned daughter still in the Soviet Union – would be an offer impossible for the Russians to refuse. So to refuse it would be confirmation to the FBI or the CIA that there was something wrong with the defection. He said: ‘What do you mean, what he’s going to do?’
‘He’s being taken on as a consultant by the CIA,’ disclosed the boy.
The absolute success that Belov was seeking! seized Yuri, at once. And just as quickly he had a balancing thought: wouldn’t the CIA set up this sort of approach as the last test before letting Levin in? He said: ‘When’s it happening?’
‘Pretty soon,’ said Petr contemptuously. ‘The offer was made yesterday.’
Could the boy have been taught to act as well as this, wondered Yuri. He said: ‘How long have you planned this?’
‘Weeks,’ admitted Petr. ‘I refused to cooperate at first and then I realized the way to escape was to lull them into thinking I had accepted it. And it worked, didn’t it?’
‘And they never suspected!’
‘Not a clue,’ boasted the boy confidently. ‘They still think I am at school. Will do, until collection this afternoon. Then the panic will start.’
So he could act, thought Yuri. Remembering the letters he knew so well, Yuri said: ‘You love your sister very much?’
Instead of answering, Petr said: ‘How could he do that! Just run and leave her!’
A madman made him: a madman still in power, thought Yuri. He needed time, a period to seek out the hidden dangers. Yevgennie Levin had to be protected, at all and every cost. Nothing could interfere with achieving the complete and ultimate object of the operation, getting a KBG man into the heart of the CIA. And that hinged upon whatever he did – or did not do – in the next few minutes. He said: ‘How have you been treated since the defection? All of you, I mean?’
Petr shrugged and said: ‘OK.’
‘Just OK?’ If there’d been American hostility, it would indicate mistrust.
‘Better than that, I suppose,’ conceded the youth reluctantly.
‘Well treated then?’
‘It’s a pretty impressive house,’ said Petr, in further concession. ‘There are guards and helicopters everywhere, particularly after the scare.’
‘What scare?’
‘I don’t know how the Americans found out but apparently a search was launched by Moscow to find us. One night there was a hell of a flap. You wouldn’t believe it!’
I would, thought Yuri: I would. So Kazin had somehow leaked the information. He wished he knew what the Americans were going to do with the dossiers: they should have arrived by now. What was he going to do if for some reason the Americans did not react as he expected? Defection was forever. The words thrust themselves into his mind, shocking him. Preposterous. Whatever faced him if he were recalled to Moscow Yuri knew he could never imagine becoming a traitor. His mind moved on, to another remark of the boy’s, the idea initially not an idea at all. He said: ‘You love your country?’
‘Of course I do: why do you think I want to go back?’
‘How much?’
There was a by-now familiar shrug. ‘You know what it’s like: it’s not something you can say. It’s something that’s there: something you can feel. Al
ways feel.’
It was, agreed Yuri. The Russian characteristic that the West found impossible to comprehend, maybe because it was so difficult verbally to express. The idea was hardening: if it were a trap then he’d be confronting one trap with another. Forcing whichever agency it was to try something else, which by their so doing would provide positive confirmation that Levin was not yet completely secure. He said: ‘Do you love your country enough to work for it?’
‘Work for it!’
‘By doing exactly what I ask you to do?’
‘What?’
Petr listened with growing and obvious incredulity and then said: ‘That would mean going back to Connecticut!’
‘Yes.’
‘And never returning to Russia.’
‘But becoming a Soviet hero.’
‘I don’t know if I could do it.’
‘No one has suspected you so far.’
Petr shook his head in refusal. ‘Natalia,’ he said. ‘I won’t turn away from Natalia, like everyone else.’
Kazin had to be destroyed, by what he had done, thought Yuri. He said: ‘I promise you – if you do as I ask – that Natalia will be released.’
‘ When she is released,’ bargained the boy.
It was an easy concession, agreed Yuri. He’d gained the time and set his trap. ‘A deal,’ he said. ‘Hurry: you’ve a train to catch.’
39
Because of the CIA’s worldwide and detailed use of Yuri’s material it was to be several months before a full assessment was finally compiled upon the success of the propaganda coup. But from the first day it was being likened to the brilliant use of Krushchev’s secret denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, which by coincidence was the comparison in that later, complete assessment.
As with the Krushchev speech, the Agency broke the story in the New York Times – which Yuri considered ironic, after the arrangement he’d made with Caroline – which ensured its global syndication as well as publication throughout America. NBC rushed out a television documentary which was again shown in every European and English-speaking country, and an author was commissioned through one of the Agency’s front publishing companies to write an instant non-fiction book which on publication week entered the bestseller lists of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times on the strength of advanced publicity. The book got on to the bestseller lists in ten other countries but achieved its record in the New York Times which had made the initial disclosure, remaining in its charts for a total of fifty-six weeks. An independent company made a film from the book, which Warner Brothers distributed, guaranteeing constant embarrassment to the Soviet Union for almost two years.
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