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“No. Spanish. With the Food and Agriculture program, United Nations. And you? Also United Nations?”

The Russian grunted a negative.

“From USSR,” he said.

“Ah, well, it will be hotter here than back home, for you. For me? About the same. And I can’t wait to get back home.”

“Me too,” said the Russian. “I prefer the cold.”

“You been here long?”

“Two years. And one to go.”

Monk laughed. “Good God, we have to do one year, and I’ll never stay that long. It’s a job with no point. Well, I must be going. Tell me, after two years you must know, is there any good place to have a drink after dinner around here? Any nightclubs?”

The Russian laughed sardonically.

“No. No diskoteki. The bar at the Rock Hotel is quiet.”

“Thanks. Oh, by the way, I am Esteban. Esteban Martinez.”

He held out his hand. The Russian hesitated, then shook.

“Pyotr,” he said. “Or Peter. Peter Solomin.”

It was on the second night that the Russian major returned to the bar of the Rock Hotel. This former colonial hostelry is built literally into and on a rock, with steps up from the street to the small reception area and, on the top floor, a bar with panoramic views of the harbor. Monk had taken a window table and was staring out. He could see Solomin enter by the reflection in the plate glass, but he waited until the man had his drink before turning.

“Ah, Señor Solomin, we meet again. Join me?”

He gestured to the other chair at his table. The Russian hesitated and then sat down. He lifted his beer.

“Za vashe zdorovye.”

Monk did the same.

“Pesetas, faena, y amor.”
Solomin frowned. Monk grinned. “Money, work, and love—in any order you like.” The Russian smiled for the first time. It was a good smile.

They talked. About this and that. About the impossibility of working with the Yemenis, of the frustration of seeing their machinery smashed up, of doing a task neither of them had any faith in. And they talked, as men far away will, of home.

Monk told him of his native Andalusia where he could ski in the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada and swim in the warm waters off Sotogrande on the same day. Solomin told of the deep forests in the snow where the Siberian tigers still roam, where fox, wolf, and deer are there for the skilled hunter.

They met on four consecutive nights, enjoying each other’s company. On the third day Monk had to present himself to the Dutchman who headed the FAO program and be taken on a tour of inspection. The CIA’s Rome Station had procured a detailed briefing of that program from the FAO in the same city, and Monk had memorized it. His own farming background helped him understand the problems, and he was unstinting in his praise. The Dutchman was quite impressed.

During the evenings and late into the night, he learned about Major Pyotr Vasilyevitch Solomin, and what he heard he liked.

The man had been born in 1945 in that tongue of Soviet land lying between northeastern Manchuria and the sea, with the North Korean border to the south. It is called Primorskiy Krai and the town of his birth was Ussuriysk.

His father had come from the countryside to the city to seek work, but he raised his son to speak the language of their tribe, the Udegey people. He also took the growing boy back to the forests whenever he could, so the lad grew to have a deep affinity with the elements of his land: forest, mountains, water, and animals.

In the nineteenth century, before the final conquest of the Udegey by the Russians, the writer Arsenyev had visited the enclave and written a book still famous in Russia about these people. He called it
Far Eastern Tigers.

Unlike the short, flat-featured Asiatics to the west and south, the Udegey were tall and hawk faced. Many centuries before, some of their ancestors had moved north, crossed the Bering Straits into what is Alaska today, and then turned south, spreading through Canada to become the Sioux and the Cheyenne.

Looking at the big Siberian soldier across the table, Monk could envisage the faces of the long dead buffalo hunters of the Platte and Powder Rivers.

For the young Solomin it was the factory or the army. He took the train north and enlisted at Khabarovsk. All youths had to do three years military service anyway and after two the best were picked for sergeant rank. With his skills out on maneuver, he was then chosen for officer school, and after two further years was commissioned as a lieutenant.

He served for seven years as lieutenant and senior lieutenant before making major at the age of thirty-three. In that time he married and had two children. He made his way without patronage or influence, surviving the racist taunts of
churka,
a Russian insult meaning “log” or “thick as a plank.” Several times he had used his fists to settle the argument.

The assignment to Yemen in 1983 had been his first foreign posting. He knew most of his colleagues enjoyed it. Despite the harsh conditions of the land, with its heat, blistering rocks, and lack of entertainment, they had roomy quarters, very different from the USSR, in the old British barracks. There was plenty of food, with lamb and fish barbecues on the beach. They could swim and, using catalogues, order clothes, videos, and music tapes from Europe.

All of this, especially the sudden exposure to the new delights of Western consumer culture, Peter Solomin appreciated. But there was something that had made him bitter and disillusioned with the regime he served. Monk could smell it, but feared to push too hard.

It came out on the fifth evening of drinking and talking. The inner anger just came bubbling over.

In 1982, a year before the Yemen posting and with Andropov still in the presidency, Solomin had been assigned to the Administration Department, Ministry of Defense, Moscow.

There he had caught the eye of a deputy defense minister and was assigned to a confidential task. Using money skimmed from the defense budget, the minister was building a sumptuous dacha for himself out along the river by Peredelkino.

Against party rules, Soviet law, and all basic morality the minister assigned over a hundred soldiers to build his luxurious mansion in the woods. Solomin was in charge. He saw the built-in kitchen units that any army wife would have given her right arm for rolling in from Finland, bought with foreign currency. He saw the Japanese hi-fi system installed in every room, the gilt bathroom fittings from Stockholm, and the bar with its aged-in-oak scotch whiskies. The experience turned him against the party and the regime. He was by far not the first loyal Soviet officer to rebel against the sheer, blind corruption of the Soviet dictatorship.

At night he taught himself English, then tuned in to the BBC World Service and the Voice of America. Both also broadcast in Russian, but he wanted to understand them directly. He learned, contrary to what he had always been taught, that the West did not want war with Russia.

If there was anything more needed to tip him over the edge, it was Yemen.

“Back home our people huddle in tiny apartments, but the
nachalstvo
live in mansions. They treat themselves like princes on our money. My wife cannot get a good hair dryer or shoes that do not fall apart, yet billions are wasted on crazy foreign missions to impress ... who?
These
people?”

“Things are changing,” said Monk helpfully. The Siberian shook his head.

Gorbachev had been in power since March, but the reforms he unwillingly, and in most cases unwittingly, introduced did not begin to bite until late 1987. Moreover, Solomin had not seen his native land for two years.

“Not changing. Those shits at the top ... I tell you, Esteban, since I moved to Moscow I have seen waste and profligacy you would not believe.”

“But the new man, Gorbachev, maybe he will change things,” said Monk. “I am not so pessimistic. One day the Russian people will be free of this dictatorship. They will have votes, real votes. Not so long now …”

“Too long. Not fast enough.”

Monk took a deep breath. A cold pitch is a dangerous ploy. In a Western democracy a loyal Soviet officer receiving a pitch can complain to his ambassador. It can lead to a diplomatic incident. In an obscure tyranny it can lead to a long and lonely death. Without any warning, Monk dropped into flawless Russian.

“You could help it change, my friend. Together, we could help it all to change. The way you want it to be.”

Solomin stared at him intently for a good thirty seconds. Monk stared back. Finally the Russian said in his own language:

“Who the hell
are
you?”

“I think you know that already, Pyotr Vasilyevitch. The question now is whether you will betray me, knowing what these people will do to me before I die. And then live with yourself.”

Solomin continued to stare at him. Then he said:

“I wouldn’t betray my worst enemy to these monkeys. But you have a hell of a nerve. What you ask is crazy. Madness. I should tell you to go fuck yourself.”

“Perhaps you should. And I would go. Fast, for my own sake. But to sit on your thumbs—to watch, hate and do nothing. Is that not also crazy?”

The Russian rose, his beer undrunk.

“I must think,” he said.

“Tomorrow night,” said Monk still in Russian. “Here. You come alone, we talk. You come with guards, I am dead. You do not come, I leave on the next plane.”

Major Solomin stalked out.

All Standard Operating Procedures would have told Monk to get out of Yemen, and fast. He had not had a total rebuff, but he had not made a score either. A man with his mind in turmoil can change that mind, and the cellars of the Yemeni secret police are fearsome places.

Monk waited twenty-four hours. The major returned, alone. It took two days more. Concealed in his toiletries Monk had brought the basics for a communications package: the secret inks, the safe addresses, the harmless phrases that contained their hidden meanings. There was not much Solomin could divulge from Yemen, but in a year he would be back in Moscow. If he still wished, he could communicate.

When they parted, their handshake lasted several seconds.

“Good luck, my friend,” said Monk.

“Good hunting, as we say back home,” replied the Siberian.

In case they might be seen leaving the Rock together, Monk sat on. His new recruit would need a code name. Far above, the stars glittered with that amazing brightness only seen in the tropics.

Among them Monk picked out the belt of the Great Hunter. Agent GT Orion was born.

¯

ON the second of August Boris Kuznetsov received a personal letter from the British journalist Mark Jefferson. It was on the letterhead of the
Daily Telegraph
in London, and although faxed to the newspaper’s Moscow bureau, it had been hand-delivered at the headquarters of the UPF Party.

Jefferson made plain his personal admiration of the stance taken by Igor Komarov against, chaos, corruption, and crime, and his own study of the party leader’s speeches over recent months.

With the recent death of the Russian president, he went on, the whole question of the future of the world’s largest country was once again a matter of focal interest. He personally wished to visit Moscow in the first half of August. For the sake of tact, he would no doubt have to interview both the candidates for the future presidency of the left and the center. This however would only be a matter of form.

Clearly the outer world’s only real interest would be in the foregone victor of that contest, Igor Komarov. He, Jefferson, would be deeply grateful if Kuznetsov could see his way clear to recommending that Mr. Komarov receive him. He could promise a major, center-page spread in the
Daily Telegraph
, with certain syndication across Europe and North America.

Although Kuznetsov, whose father had been a diplomat with the United Nations for years and had used his position to see his son graduate from Cornell, knew the United States better than Europe, he certainly knew London.

He also knew that much of the American press tended to be liberal and had been generally hostile to his employer on the occasions when interviews had been granted. The last had been a year ago, and the questioning had been adversarial. Komarov had forbidden further exposures to the American press.

But London was different. Several major newspapers and two national magazines were firmly conservative, though not as far to the right as Igor Komarov in his public pronouncements.

I would recommend that an exception be made for Mark Jefferson, Mr. President,” he told Igor Komarov at their weekly meeting the next day.

“Who is this man?”
asked Komarov, who disliked all journalists, Russian included. They asked questions he saw no reason he should answer.

“I have prepared a file on him here, Mr. President,” said Kuznetsov, handing over a slim folder. “As you will see, he supports the restoration of capital punishment for murder in his own country. Also vigorous opposition to Britain’s membership in the collapsing European Union. A staunch conservative. The last time he mentioned yourself, it was to say you were the sort of Russian leader London should support and do business with.”

Komarov grunted, and then agreed. His reply went to the
Telegraph’s
Moscow office by courier the same day. It said Mr. Jefferson should be in Moscow for the interview on August 9.

Yemen, January 1986

NEITHER Solomin nor Monk could have predicted that the major’s tour in Aden would end nine months prematurely. But on January 13 a violent civil war broke out between two rival factions within the governing caucus. So fierce was the fighting that the decision was made to evacuate all foreign nationals, Russians included. This took place over six days, starting January 15. Peter Solomin was among those who took to the boats.

The airport was being raked with fire, so the sea was the only way out. By a fluke the British royal yacht
Britannia
had just emerged from the southern end of the Red Sea, heading for Australia to prepare for Queen Elizabeth to tour.

On a message from the British Embassy in Aden, the Admiralty in London was alerted and consulted the queen’s private secretary. He checked with the monarch and Queen Elizabeth ordered that the
Britannia
should do all it could to help.