Lost American

by Brian Freemantle

  We even share the same wife, thought Brinkman. He said, ‘You must break all contact, of course. No more meetings.’

  ‘What if his response is to do what you threaten?’

  ‘It won’t be,’ said Brinkman, confidently. ‘He won’t know you’re with me. He’ll imagine some internal difficulty.’

  ‘Which could arise,’ said Orlov.

  ‘How?’ asked Brinkman, his confidence dipping.

  Orlov recounted the fears of his affair with Harriet being suspected and a danger arising if she were contacted and in the darkness Brinkman smiled to himself, the reason why the Americans had not put the woman under agreed protection finally explained. He wasn’t behind in the race any more, he thought. He was way out ahead and could actually see the finishing line, with the white tape stretched out invitingly. He said, ‘No one was aware of my approaching her. If the KGB had known, they wouldn’t have let the book reach you. And if they had, we’d have both been arrested by now.’

  Orlov stared abruptly around him, at the realisation. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I suppose you are right.’

  ‘So there’s no danger to Harriet and there’s no danger to you. You’re going to get out, like you want to.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll want to maintain this sort of contact?’ said Orlov wearily.

  ‘Contact,’ agreed Brinkman. ‘But not personal meetings, like Blair wanted. They’re too dangerous …’ He took the Russian’s hand and placed in it a list of the public telephone numbers he’d laboriously copied after leaving the cinema. ‘They’re all street kiosks,’ Brinkman explained. ‘All untraceable. We’ll keep Tuesdays. Every Tuesday, at three o’clock precisely, you telephone me, starting with the number at the top of the list I’ve given you. If there’s a problem, wait until the succeeding Tuesday, at the same time, and move one number down. There’ll be no proveable connection between us: you’ll be quite safe.’

  Brinkman was conscious of the other man nodding, in the darkness. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘That’s very good. I was getting extremely frightened, having to make personal meetings.’

  ‘The only purpose of the calls will be for you to tell me that you’ve succeeded in getting on a delegation. Once you do, I’ll set everything up.’

  Orlov sighed. ‘I understand,’ he said.

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ said Brinkman, trying to encourage the other man.

  Orlov stopped walking again and turned to confront the Englishman. ‘I’m sick of hearing that,’ he said. ‘And phrases like that. Shall I tell you something, Mr Brinkman? I know I’m trapped now. Trapped without any possibility of going back. But if I had that opportunity I think I would. I think I’d abandon Harriet and remain in Russia.’

  It was difficult – almost impossible in the first, gut-churning hours – for Sokol to subdue his fear-driven fury. But he did. It would have been easy but pointless to punish the street men, like he’d punished the others. It was his fault, for not taking personal charge to the point of face-to-face briefings and control room command, leaving it instead to subordinates who in turn left it to the ground personnel. Embassy surveillance was regarded within the serice as the most menial – although it shouldn’t have been -the place for rejects from other departments. Which was an attitude he’s also known and disregarded. No mistakes, Sokol remembered. And he’d gone on making them. Would it be possible to catch up?

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  With Sokol in personal control, the surveillance was complete. There were rotating squads attached to Blair and Brinkman, the schedule devised so that at no time, day or night, did the number in those squads fall below thirty men. Each group was supported – again on a twenty-four hour basis – by a fleet of radio cars which were linked through individual studio vans. There were disguised television vehicles employed whenever possible, picturing the Englishman and the American as they moved openly about the city. On the first Friday Blair tried to leave the embassy by the same method as before but this time every vehicle was followed and he was seen getting out on the Ulitza Neglinnaya. Before the American successfully crossed and entered the foyer of the Metropole Hotel, going into his avoidance pattern, the alarm had been raised. The central control room in Dzerzhinsky Square was the centrepiece of the voice traffic and Sokol worked from there, a map spread out before him to coordinate the operation. He swamped the Sverdlova area, bringing in all his prepared units. The vast building was surrounded, twenty people in place and more en route, when Blair emerged from the west door on to the Marksa Prospekt and started north, towards Ostankino. He was identified immediately and around him formed a phalanx of unseen, unrealised watchers. By the time Blair reached the main metro station serving Dzerzhinsky Square a television van was in place but it was useless because Blair ducked down into the underground system.

  From his command post ironically less than half a mile from where Blair was moving Sokol muttered to the attentive technicians. ‘Got him! This time we’ve got him!’

  The Russian snapped his fingers expectantly and was obediently handed another map, this time of the underground system. Sokol gave his instructions over the radio crisply and concisely, identifying the interchange points from which Blair might try to switch, moving cars and men to them to be ready above and below ground: within minutes one of the men who had descended into Dzerzhinskaya emerged to report through the waiting radio the direction in which Blair caught the underground train and Sokol began to track the American’s route on the map, with a wax pencil.

  Blair was vaguely aware that for the time of the day the carriages seemed more crowded than normal and he wrinkled his nose at the cabbage smell that seemed so pervasive in the city. The seeming indigenous smell had worried him when he first arrived but now – apart from rare occasions like this – he ceased to notice it. Ann still smelled it, of course. Poor Ann; Blair reckoned that she could recite every disadvantage of the Soviet capital, without missing one. Blair made his first move at Kropotkinskaya, alert for anyone who followed. Three people did but only one remained on the platform and Blair hung back, letting the man take the next train without attempting to board it himself. He got confidently on to the second connection, unaware that the two who had hurried up the stairs had done so to alert four more at ground level who came down in time to follow the American on to the train. Blair disembarked again at Arbatskaya and climbed to street level, setting off down Suvorovskiy Boulevard and abruptly hailing a taxi, which would have worked had the surveillance been less complete. As it was there were two radio-linked cars able to alternate the pursuit and give -literally-a running commentary back to Sokol at the KGB headquarters. Sokol moved his pencil from the underground to the street map.

  ‘Staying close to the river,’ he realised. At once to the people around him, he said, ‘Get a boat.’

  Blair paid his cab off on the Ulitza Bol’shiye Kamenshchiki, going at once underground again but only for a short journey this time, emerging once again at Kiyevskaya and walking the remaining distance to the park.

  ‘Krasnaya!’ identified Sokol triumphantly, as the pencil stopped its movement. ‘Encircle it,’ he ordered. ‘I want people moved in carefully, replacing any staff there. Attendants, sweepers. Everyone.’

  In the park Blair settled himself near the archer statue, feigning to read his copy of Pravda. How long would it all take? he wondered. It could be weeks – months possibly – before Orlov could get on to a delegation. He hoped it wasn’t months. He wanted to resolve things with Ann quicker than that. And the problems could be resolved. He knew they could. Everything could be resolved and they could be happy again, if they had the chance. It was only Moscow. He’d be glad to get out, now. Once he’d regarded it as the most important posting of his career – which it undoubtedly was – but now he regarded settling things with Ann as more important.

  Blair checked his watch, seeing there were only fifteen minutes to go before the appointed meeting, idly watching a park attendant emerge from a side path, stabbing at l
eaves with a spiked stick. From another path a couple came hand in hand, appearing unaware of anyone or anything, and sat on a bench facing him from across the circle. Blair hoped their presence wouldn’t disturb Orlov, if the Russian kept today’s meeting. There was no reason why it should; from their absorption in each other, which was getting increasingly intimate, it was more likely that the presence of the two men would eventually disturb the lovers.

  ‘Noon,’ guessed Sokol, aloud, as the information about the American’s watch check was radioed into the control room.

  Sokol was tensed in anticipation of what was going to happen. It would be a coup to trap Blair actually in the act of proveable espionage. If he could do the same with Brinkman – and he was determined to do the same with Brinkman – Sokol knew it would be the coup to make everything possible. Sokol stayed crouched forward over his maps table but not looking at them, concentrating instead upon the slow moving clock mounted against the far wall, watching the quarter, half and then three quarters eventually pass with no news from the now completely occupied park.

  On his seat in that park, Blair decided to allow more time. There were a dozen reasons why Orlov could be late, although he’d never been late on the previous occasions. And a dozen more reasons why he wouldn’t be able to keep the appointment at all, this Friday or several Fridays after. Blair was still unsettled by Orlov’s non-appearance; although Blair knew all the reasons and all the difficulties he’d still unprofessionally convinced himself of the Russian’s appearance and was disappointed that it hadn’t happened. It still could, he thought, checking the time once more; it was still only one-thirty.

  The park attendant completed his leaf collection and the lovers stopped short of positive intercourse and Blair actually read the Soviet newspaper, from cover to cover. At three o’clock he finally quit, rising slump-shouldered and catching the first taxi he managed to stop. Blair’s expertise was still such to prevent his being ordinarily careless, although his hop-scotch from car to metro to bus was always monitored, because the surveillance was extraordinary.

  In the Dzerzhinsky Square radio room an equally dejected Sokol stared down at the scrawled pencil lines losing interest momentarily in the crackled requests for further instructions from the radio.

  ‘It was supposed to be a meeting,’ Sokol said, more to himself than to anyone else in the room. ‘I know it was intended to be a meeting.’

  When he got back to his own office, Sokol found waiting for him the request to contact the chairman of the KGB, for a personal interview. Sokol threw down the memorandum, sighing. He was surprised it had taken so long in coming.

  The reaction from Washington came close to hysteria. Blair factually reported that he had attended, as arranged, but that Orlov failed to appear and then emphasised that from the beginning he’d anticipated a quite understandable interruption to any regular, weekly meetings and arranged the fallback with the man. His attempted assurance – with which Blair was unhappy anyway – failed entirely to placate Langley headquarters. Blair’s attempts to maintain an open line of communication were constantly broken, with a flurry of questions some of which his messages had already answered and some of which were beyond answer at all. Aware, despite being so far away, of the growing inquest, Blair repeated Orlov’s concern about any approach to Harriet being made and asked for a categoric assurance that the agreement had been kept and that no KGB watch squad could have themselves become aware of the American surveillance. The apparent guarantee came but Blair thought it was muted and decided he’d made a telling point. He bet that Harriet Johnson was as sanitised and isolated as any goldfish-bowled astronaut on a moonwalk. And bet further that any intelligence operator worth his salt could have picked the observation up in five seconds flat, allowing for natural blinking.

  Brinkman timed perfectly his arrival at the public kiosk on the Ulitza Gor’kova, its possible use the only uncertainty. It was empty, so even that wasn’t a problem. Brinkman hadn’t bothered to evade what he still believed to be only the normal embassy personnel attention, because having established his undetectable contact routine, evasion simply wasn’t necessary. Professional to the letter, he made the pretence of seeking a coin at the moment of entry and snatched the telephone from the rest at the beginning of the first ring, so successfully that Sokol’s radio van, with its directional pistol microphone, failed to pick up that it was an incoming call. Orlov hadn’t managed to get a delegation and Brinkman had nothing to say except that he would be at the subsequent kiosk at exactly the same time the following week. Brinkman succeeded in covering the exchange against any outside interest by fumbling with the rare and tattered directory until Orlov disengaged and then calling his own number, coin ready in the slot, finally – again for external observation if there was any – slamming down the headpiece, a man frustrated at being unable to make a connection.

  Although outwardly Brinkman maintained the annoyed pretence, he left the telephone box hot with excitement, seeing Orlov’s contact the proof that the Russian had come over to the British and that he’d snatched the prize right from beneath Blair’s nose. The first prize, Brinkman told himself. There was another to follow, when Ann made her decision.

  The telephone visit was recorded in the account of the observation upon Brinkman but so casual and quick was it that no specific importance was attached and Sokol did not single it out as anything of relevance, either.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  It took every extreme of will-power and concentration that Pietr Orlov possessed – and then some the Russian didn’t know he had – but knowing that everything he wanted depended upon it he cleared his mind of a woman he loved called Harriet Johnson and an American he tolerated called Blair and an Englishman he despised called Brinkman and devoted himself entirely to the agricultural policy he recognised to be the passport for what he wanted. He rewrote and re-worked and then rewrote again the passages that had offended Sevin – rightly offended the man, Orlov acknowledged, because they were careless. – and when he got them right he started again until finally he was confident they were perfect.

  Which Sevin assured him they were, accepting them practically without correction. Still Orlov forced himself, determined to maintain the standard, and Sevin remained congratulatory, angry at himself for displaying an old man’s lack of judgement and reflecting a lifetime’s suspicion, accepting the temporary distraction had after all been the disruption of a broken marriage.

  The chance came – sooner than he expected it to – on the fourth week. Orlov evolved from the beginning a system of monitoring everything that was happening elsewhere – the work of the other committees and the other groups – involved in the agronomy review and into the net in exactly a month the system brought the memorandum from the central working committee discussing the delegation visit to Europe.

  Orlov felt hollowed by the initial flood of excitement: at the quickness of its happening and his luck in discovering it and the thought of it all – everything – being settled. There was fear, too. As great as excitement. He hoped so much that he wouldn’t fail. He’d be all right, naturally, if things went smoothly. It was of the unexpected that Orlov was frightened. On the day the memorandum reached him, his hand positively trembled, so that he had difficulty in reading the words and had to put it down upon the unmoving desk and bend over it. France first – the inviting country – and then Denmark, to study their dairy system. A full fifteen days’ tour: starting in just three and a half weeks’ time.

  Orlov prepared his approach to Sevin with the consummate care that he knew everything now required – the sort of care he’d taken over the embassy visit when he’d made contact with the American – getting approval for his latest section of his report first and then letting the conversation between them ramble into generalities before mentioning, in an apparent aside, the proposed European visit. When Sevin seized upon it, as Orlov guessed – and hoped – he would, the younger Russian said, more direct than before, ‘I thought I should be par
t of the delegation …’ He nodded towards the papers on Sevin’s desk. ‘All that is being written and compiled from previous reports and statistics. I’d be better able to argue innovations and change if I’d personally seen the methods of other, more advanced countries.’ What right had he had to question morality with Brinkman? thought Orlov.

  ‘The names will have already been selected,’ pointed out Sevin.

  ‘I realise that,’ said Orlov, increasingly an astute Kremlin operator. ‘I wonder why the visit wasn’t made generally known in the first place?’

  The reaction of Sevin, who had lived through a lifetime of plot and counter-plot, was as predictable as Orlov expected it to be. ‘You think it was kept from us!’

  ‘I’ve no way of knowing that,’ said Orlov, honestly but prepared. ‘Was it ever brought up at any meeting you attended?’

  ‘No,’ said the old man.

  ‘Nor at any in which I’ve sat,’ said Orlov. Playing the best card last he said, ‘Comrade Didenko is on the central working committee.’

  Sevin’s face tightened. ‘You think he is trying to exclude us!’

  ‘I’ve no way of knowing that, either,’ said Orlov.

  Four days later Sevin announced to Orlov that he would be forming part of the Soviet delegation to France and to Denmark.

  The pressure from Washington upon Eddie Blair was of a ridiculous degree, so ridiculous that Blair recognised it and tried as best he could to stop it spreading over into his already strained private life. But that was difficult because the demands kept him late at the embassy and required his early attendance in the morning and the workload created greater tension between himself and Ann. He studiously kept the Friday assignations and when Orlov failed to show up on the fourth occasion, three of the insistent questions came from the Washington headquarters signed personally by the Director, which was practically unheard of, and Blair recognised his replies clearly showed his contempt. He sent them anyway, irritated by the panic. He was as uncertain as they were – more so, because they were safe and protected back at Langley and it was still his ass displayed and waiting to be shot off – but it was still only four weeks and there could be the simplest of explanations why Orlov needed to keep away. This wasn’t Sunday brunch at the Mayflower, for Christ’s sake! As the thought came to Blair the cipher machine stuttered into life again and he transcribed as it printed, reading that Langley had succeeded in getting visas for two men who would be arriving in advance of the next scheduled meeting. There was nothing whatsoever they could do – less now that Orlov had severed contact – but Blair realised it enabled Langley once more to be able to imagine they were doing something active and positive. Blair realised, too, that it indicated their belief in his inability successfully to continue with the operation. So maybe it would be he who was brunching soon at the Mayflower in Washington; he hadn’t thought it was possible for things to develop as they had, quite so quickly.