The early, tentative exchanges of intelligence were successful. Both men received high praise from their handlers for collecting intel on the enemy, while successfully concealing the fact they were selling intelligence of equal or greater value to the very same enemy. It was a decades-long high-wire act; with a treason charge certain to follow for either man should the illicit arrangement ever be exposed.
But Vasily’s arrangement never came to light inside the KGB, and for the longest time, neither did the CIA tumble to Winston Andrews’ activity. By the nineteen-fifties, each spy was rocketing up the ranks inside his agency. Vasily became the youngest station chief in KGB history when placed in charge of Leningrad in 1957, and he’d remained in his position ever since.
The key to his success, and the factor that allowed him to act both as a traitor to his country and a valuable collector of intelligence at the same time, was the fact that Vasily never overstepped. He only utilized his CIA contacts for information once or twice a year on an official basis, making the flow of information slow and occasional rather than rapid, which would have drawn far too much attention from the wrong people and resulted in his—and his American comrade—getting caught.
And then shot; at least in his case.
Shortly after assuming his duties in Leningrad, Vasily expanded his operation to include contract work: utilizing his American contacts to gain intelligence not for the benefit of the Soviet government, but for private entities willing to meet Vasily’s extremely steep asking price.
In this manner, he was able over the years to amass exorbitant wealth through the sale of intelligence to mercenaries and other interested parties, while charging an extremely steep fee, thus assuring he did not run the risk of going to the well too often and seeing the entire operation blow up in his face.
From the early nineteen-sixties until last year—a span of more than a quarter-century—the mutually beneficial arrangement between Vasily and Winston Andrews ran with the smoothness of a finely crafted Swiss watch.
And then, last year, abruptly and without warning, Andrews disappeared.
Details were sketchy and hard to come by, even for a KGB station chief, and it took Vasily a long time to learn Winston Andrews’ fate. He was still uncertain of all that had happened. But apparently someone inside the CIA finally uncovered Andrews’ status as a KGB collaborator and the man had taken his own life to avoid suffering the humiliating consequences of his treachery.
This should have marked the end of Vasily’s long run as a collector of intelligence for the KGB—not to mention his lucrative private business—but Vasily was nothing if not resourceful. He had long ago envisioned a scenario whereby Andrews was outed or killed, and he had planned for the future accordingly.
He had developed a second conduit of intelligence inside Langley.
An even more valuable one.
As soon as Vasily learned of Andrews’ disappearance he withdrew from all activity with his secondary source, like a turtle retreating inside its shell. He kept a low profile for months, concerned that prior to his suicide, his old comrade Winston Andrews might have revealed the identity of his collaborator to someone inside the CIA.
A revelation that would most likely get Vasily killed.
When nearly a year went by and that dire consequence never materialized, Vasily cautiously renewed acquaintances with his second contact, his big fish. The contact’s name was Roger Thornton, one of just three deputy CIA directors. Like Vasily and Winston Andrews, Thornton had begun his career as an operative, rising through agency ranks over the years until eventually ascending to a position just one rung below that of Director Aaron Stallings himself.
Unlike Andrews, Thornton had become more reluctant to share intel the higher he climbed on his organizational ladder, but that fact was irrelevant to Vasily. He had Thornton by the balls, because he’d recorded multiple conversations with the man in which information was exchanged that was damaging to the United States of America.
Vasily had only needed to mention this fact to Thornton once to make his point: he would cooperate fully with Vasily when asked, or the KGB station chief would leak some of his hours of incriminating conversations with Thornton to the American press, and Thornton would be finished. His career would be destroyed and he would face life in prison—perhaps even execution—for treason.
Despite having been nearly a year since they last spoke, Vasily found it unnecessary to remind Thornton of the consequences for not complying with a request when they renewed acquaintances in January. They made a bit of small talk and then got down to business
Thornton reacted angrily to Vasily’s request. “The name of a covert operative? That’s going too far, Vasily. I can’t possibly provide you with that information. It’s…it’s just…impossible.”
“It is possible, my friend,” Vasily had answered, speaking calmly and quietly. “In fact, not only is it possible, it is exactly what you are going to do.”
Thornton had gone quiet for a long time, and Vasily let the silence drag on, knowing the CIA deputy director was considering his options, knowing also that he had none.
At last Thornton had said, “Hypothetically speaking, if I were to provide you with a name, what operative would we be referring to?”
“We are referring to the young woman who tortured our man inside a CIA safe house over the winter and then assassinated one of Russia’s preeminent scientists on the streets of Moscow.”
Thornton had hemmed and hawed and sputtered and complained, but in the end he had promised to “see what I can do.”
He came through much more quickly than I would have expected, too, Vasily thought with a smile. Within days, Thornton had gotten back to Vasily with not just the name of the operative, but with a fair amount of associated biographical information as well.
Shortly afterward, Vasily’s net worth had increased dramatically. It was the single biggest score of his illicit career trading in information. Because he had held Piotr Speransky up for a small fortune in exchange for that name.
As KGB station chief, Vasily was well aware of Speransky’s humiliation last winter at the hands of a CIA operative in Moscow. When he combined that knowledge with a familiarity of just how unstable and prideful Speransky was, Vasily concluded—correctly, as it turned out—that Speransky would be willing to pay a king’s ransom to learn the name of the woman he needed to kill in order to regain his reputation and save his career.
But that gain in net worth was a double-edged sword. It also placed Vasily squarely in Piotr Speransky’s crosshairs. Vasily knew that if Speransky survived his mission and was successful in eliminating the American, his next move would be to return to Leningrad to recover the fortune in cash he’d been required to pay Vasily.
And that scenario could not be permitted to occur.
Speransky was cold-blooded and remorseless. He would execute Vasily and take every last American dime of his money back, along with whatever else of value he could get his hands on. He would never stop until Vasily was lying dead in a pool of his own blood.
The notion that he could find himself the target of a man like Piotr Speransky was terrifying. But he wasn’t dead yet, and he wasn’t out of ideas yet, either. Vasily Labochev hadn’t risen to a top post inside the Soviet Union’s premier intelligence service without being able to deal effectively with risky contingencies.
He had a plan, and if successful, his plan would preserve his life, not to mention his fortune. This was why he was sitting behind his desk at two-thirty in the morning and not cavorting in his bed with one of the many prostitutes he single-handedly kept in business.
Because two-thirty a.m. on May nineteenth in Leningrad was six-thirty p.m. on May eighteenth in Washington, D.C. and he very much needed to speak to someone in Washington.
Someone very specific.
He took a long sip from his tumbler of vodka and smiled into the telephone handset. “Hello, Comrade Thornton, and how are you this fine evening?”
; 24
A long silence followed Vasily’s greeting.
It was exactly what he had expected.
When Thornton responded, it was with obvious reluctance. “Uh…what do you…I mean, I didn’t expect to hear from you again for a very long time.”
“What do you mean? It has been several months. The last time we spoke was, what? Late January? Early February?”
“Something like that, yes. I was hoping for longer.”
“Understandable, given the lengthy delay between our previous communications. But I so enjoy speaking with you, I decided to…what do you Americans say…chat you up again.”
“Nobody I know says that.”
“Nevertheless, I do enjoy our conversations.”
“You want something else from me. You always want something else.”
“So cynical, my friend. You do not believe I might simply wish to pass the time with you?”
Thornton had been speaking quietly, but now he lowered his voice further. When he spoke, though, it was with barely contained fury. “I most certainly do not believe that. And this is not the time to be talking. The murder of General Tanner is all over the news here. We shouldn’t speak for a very long time. We certainly shouldn’t be speaking right now.”
“And yet we are. And we will, as often and for as long as I wish.”
“What do you want, goddammit?”
“As pleasing as it always is to chat with you, I am calling for a specific purpose.”
“That’s a shock.”
“I need a favor.”
Thornton chuckled bitterly. “And the surprises keep coming.”
Vasily couldn’t help smiling. “Obviously you have made the connection between the intelligence you provided me last January and the breaking news in your country.”
“Made the connection? Of course I made the connection! How stupid do you think I am?”
“I do not think you are stupid at all, my friend, which is why I know you will do exactly as you are told.”
“For the last time, what do you want?”
“I need you to make a piece of intelligence available to your operational assets.”
Another long silence followed, as Thornton tried to decipher what he’d just heard. Then he said, “You want to pass information along to our operatives? As in, the CIA?”
“See?” Vasily said. “I told you I did not think you were stupid.”
“Why would you want to provide intel to our side? To set up our operatives so you can murder more innocent Americans? No. I will not be a party to any more killing of my countrymen, Vasily. I don’t care what you threaten me with, I won’t do it.”
“Slow down, my friend. I am afraid you misinterpret the nature of this call. I am not interested in passing along false intelligence. I am not interested in setting up American operatives to be killed. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“Then why would you voluntarily provide intel to the CIA that would be damaging to your side?”
“Because I believe this information would not be damaging to my side.”
“I don’t follow.”
“This is one of those very rare instances where one event can be beneficial to both sides.”
“Keep going.”
“You see, the man who committed the murder of which you spoke a moment ago, the killer of General Tanner, has—”
“It’s not ‘the man,’” Thornton interrupted. “It’s your agent. A KGB operative. Just to be clear.”
“Da,” Vasily agreed. “The KGB agent. This man has gone…how do you say…off the rails. He has taken the intelligence you so graciously provided and run with it in a direction entirely unanticipated—and unapproved—by his KGB handlers. We have thus reached the determination that this man is no longer capable of following orders and confining himself to strict mission protocols.”
“And? I’m supposed to care about this because?”
“We have decided it is necessary to end him.”
“Then why don’t you get off the phone with me and just do it? That seems to be the sort of thing you people are exceedingly good at.”
Vasily laughed. “Why, thank you, my friend, I’ll take that as a compliment.” He sipped his vodka before continuing. “We understand the execution of General Tanner has caused untold headaches for your agency, and would like to offer up our man as some small measure of…fence-mending, as you Americans would say.”
“Nobody I know says that, either.”
“Still.”
“Let me get this straight,” Thornton said incredulously. “You blackmail me into giving you the name of the agency operative who executed Slava Marinov, and then claim to be surprised when one of your men murders our operative’s father in a clear case of revenge? That’s the biggest pile of steaming bullshit I’ve ever heard, and I’ve spent my entire adult life working with some of the most deceitful people in the world.”
“That may be so,” Vasily said calmly, “but, still, it is the truth. I give you my word as a gentleman and fellow career intelligence professional that the information I am going to pass along is not meant to entrap any of your people, or even to put them in any danger whatsoever, beyond the risk they will take completing the assassination of our man.”
“I don’t believe you,” Thornton said simply.
Another sip of vodka. It was smooth and slightly spicy and made Vasily’s belly feel as though a small, cozy campfire was burning inside it. He’d anticipated Thornton’s response; the conversation really couldn’t have gone any other way. What Vasily was proposing was antithetical to the philosophy not just of the KGB, but of America’s CIA as well. There was no greater sin for any intelligence professional than to reveal the identity of another operative to the enemy, and after Vasily had forced Thornton to do just that the last time they spoke, he was now offering to do the same thing? Expecting nothing in return?
It made no rational sense. So Vasily understood Thornton’s reaction.
He also didn’t care about it. Thornton wasn’t the person whose opinion mattered. When he had forced Thornton to reveal the identity of Marinov’s killer, he hadn’t just passed that intel along to Piotr Sperasky. He’d also done a little research into the CIA covert operative known as Tracie Tanner.
What he’d learned was that Tanner, in addition to being petite and beautiful, was one of the most deadly and resourceful agents in the Central Intelligence Agency’s arsenal. She must be, because she no longer had any official ties to the agency, and yet Vasily knew for a fact she had accomplished multiple missions inside the Soviet Union, including, of course, the infamous—and brazen—assassination of Slava Marinov mere blocks from the Kremlin.
Based on what he’d uncovered in his research, Vasily would have bet his life that this Tracie Tanner person would never rest until she hunted down and eliminated the man who murdered her father. In fact, he was betting his life on it, because he knew that if Speransky survived, he, Vasily, was the next target on Speransky’s list.
And since the upper echelon of KGB management had decided to offer reinstatement to the assassin, Vasily couldn’t very well countermand their orders and use another Soviet assassin to take out Speransky. His choice was stark and terrifying: offer Speransky up to the CIA or wait to be murdered by the most deadly and unstable man in the KGB’s arsenal.
The decision was a simple one.
But in order for the American operative known as Tracie Tanner to do Vasily the great favor of saving his life by eliminating his murderer, she would need to know where to find the man.
Vasily had that base covered as well: it would be right here in Leningrad. Speransky had emptied out almost all the hidden caches of funds he’d stashed away over the course of his career, but there was one he had left untouched.
The one he kept in Leningrad.
Vasily knew it hadn’t been touched because he’d known about Speransky’s Leningrad safe house for years. Nothing that went on inside his city escaped Vasily’s attention, and
he had been aware of Speransky’s cache almost from the day the assassin established it. One thing Vasily didn’t know was how much money had been stuffed inside the small, square concrete-block building located inside a dying industrial park on the outskirts of the city, but he knew it was a lot.
Vasily had paid a small fortune to a low-level KGB operative to tail Speransky around Eurasia from the moment Vasily advised him of Tracie Tanner’s identity until the moment the assassin had departed for the United States, and at no time had the man come within shouting distance of his Leningrad safe house.
There could be only one reason Speransky would have left this particular cache untouched: he planned to return to Leningrad and transfer the money he would reacquire after killing Vasily—along with much of the remainder of Vasily’s personal fortune—to his hidden storage area right here in the city.
This meant Vasily’s time was running out.
Quickly.
“Are…are you still there?” Thornton’s voice was half fearful and half hopeful that Vasily had suddenly dropped dead, and Vasily realized he had gone silent for at least half a minute as he mentally reviewed his plan. He shook his head in disgust at himself; it was a measure of how badly Speransky had shaken him that he’d allowed such a show of weakness when dealing with his American mole.
“Of course I am still here,” he answered gruffly. “But our connection is bad, and I missed your last comment. What did you say?”
“I said I don’t believe for one second you are offering General Tanner’s killer to us as some kind of olive branch between our two agencies. That’s patently absurd.” Thornton’s voice was stronger and more forceful than it had been at any time during their conversation and Vasily mentally cursed himself for allowing the man to believe he may have gained the upper hand.
Or any hand.
No matter. He would put the American in his place right now. “I do not care,” he said curtly.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 158