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At their first meeting Ames was going to protest at the inordinate speed with which the KGB had picked up the men he had betrayed, thus putting him in danger. But Vlad got in first, apologizing for the crudity and explaining that Mikhail Gorbachev had personally overruled them all. Then he came down to the business that brought him to Rome.

“We have a problem, my dear Rick,” he said. “The volume of material you have brought us is quite enormous and of inestimable value. High among these documents are the brief pen portraits and photos you supplied of the top control officers for spies being run inside the USSR.”

Ames was puzzled, trying to register through a fuzz of alcohol.

“Yes, anything wrong?” he asked.

“Not wrong, just a puzzle,” Mechulayev said, and produced a photograph that he laid on the coffee table.

“This one. A certain Jason Monk. Right?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“In your reports you describe his reputation in the SE Division as ‘a rising star.’ Meaning, we presume, that he controls one, maybe two assets inside the Soviet Union.”

“That’s the view around the office, or it was when I last looked in. But you must have them.”

“Ah, my dear Rick,
that
is the problem. All the traitors you kindly revealed to us have now been identified, arrested, and ... talked to. And each has been, how shall I put it ...” The Russian recalled the shuddering men he had faced in the interrogation room after Grishin had introduced the prisoners to his own personal brand of pressure to cooperate.

“They have all been very frank, very candid, most cooperative. Each has told us who his control officers were, in some cases several of them. But no Jason Monk. Not one. Of course, false names can be used, usually are. But the picture, Rick. Not one recognized the picture. Now, you see my problem? Who does Monk run, and where are they?”

“I don’t know. I can’t understand it. They must have been on the 301 files.”

“My dear Rick, neither can we because they weren’t.”

Before the meeting ended Ames had been given a vast amount of money and a list of tasks. He stayed in Rome for three years and betrayed everything he could, an enormous haul of secret and top-secret documents. Among these were four more agents, but all non-Russians, nationals of the East European Bloc countries. But task number one was clear and simple: On your return to Washington or hopefully before, find out who Monk runs in the USSR.

¯

WHILE Detective Inspectors Novikov and Volsky had been indulging in their informative lunch in the canteen at militia headquarters, the Duma had been in full session.

It had taken time to recall the Russian parliament from summer recess, for so large is the territory that many of the delegates had to travel thousands of miles to attend the constitutional debate. Nevertheless, the debate was calculated to be of extraordinary importance because the issue at stake was a change of the constitution.

After the unforeseen death of President Cherkassov, Article Fifty-nine of the constitution required the prime minister to take over the presidency per interim. The period of interregnum was decreed to be three months.

Prime Minister Ivan Markov had indeed taken over the acting Presidency but, after consulting a number of experts, had been advised that as Russia was due for a fresh presidential election in June 2000, to have set an earlier one for October 1999 could cause serious dislocation, even chaos. The motion before the Duma was therefore in favor of a once-only Amendment Act, extending the acting presidency for three further months and advancing the year 2000 election from June to January.

The word
Duma
comes from the verb
dumat,
meaning to think or contemplate; thus the Duma is “a place of thinking.” Many observers felt the Duma more a place of screaming and shouting than of mature contemplation. On that hot summer’s day it certainly justified the latter description.

The debate lasted all day, rising to levels of passion such that the Speaker spent much of his time shouting for order, and at one time threatened to suspend the session until further notice.

Two delegates were so abusive that the Speaker ordered their ejection, accompanied by violent scuffles recorded by the television cameras, until the expelled pair were on the pavement outside. There both, who disagreed violently with each other, held impromptu press conferences that degenerated into a pavement brawl until broken up by the police.

Inside the chamber, as the air-conditioning system broke down under the strain and the sweating delegates of what purported to be the world’s third most populous democracy screamed and swore at each other, the lineup became clear.

The Fascist Union of Patriotic Forces, under orders from Igor Komarov, insisted the presidential elections should be decreed for October, three months after the death of Cherkassov and in accordance with Article Fifty-nine. Their tactic was obvious. The UPF was so far ahead in the polls that it could only see its own access to supreme power being advanced by nine months.

The neo-Communists of the Socialist Union and the reformists of the Democratic Alliance for once found themselves in agreement. Both were trailing in the polls and needed all the time they could get to restore their positions. Put another way, neither was ready for an early election.

The debate, or shouting match, raged until sundown when an exhausted and hoarse Speaker finally decreed that enough voices had been heard for a vote to be called. The left wing and the centrists voted together to defeat the ultra-right, and the motion was carried. The June 2000 presidential elections were rescheduled for January 16, 2000.

Within an hour the outcome of the vote was carried across the nation by the national TV newscast
Vremlya
as its lead item. Embassies throughout the capital worked late and lights burned as coded cables from ambassadors to their home governments flooded out.

It was because the British Embassy was also still fully staffed that Gracie Fields was at his desk when the call from Inspector Novikov came through.

Yalta, September 1986

THE day was hot and there was no air-conditioning in the taxi that rattled along the coastal highway northeastward out of Yalta. The American wound down the window to let the cooler air from the Black Sea blow over him. Leaning to one side he was also able to see in the rearview mirror above the driver’s head. No car from the local Cheka seemed to be following.

The long cruise from Marseilles via Naples, Malta, and Istanbul had been tiresome but tolerable. Monk had played his part in a manner that aroused no suspicion. With gray hair, tinted glasses, and elaborate courtesy he was just another academic retiree taking a summer vacation cruise.

His fellow Americans on board had accepted that he shared their sincere belief that the only hope for world peace was for the peoples of the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to get to know one another better. One of them, a spinster teacher from Connecticut, was much taken with the exquisitely mannered Texan who held out her chair and tipped his low-crowned Stetson whenever they met on deck.

At Varna in Bulgaria he had not gone ashore, pleading a touch of the sun. But at all the other ports of call he had accompanied the tourists of five Western nationalities to ruins, ruins, and more ruins.

At Yalta he stepped down for the first time in his life onto the soil of Russia. Exhaustively prepared and briefed as he was, it was easier than he had thought. For one thing, although the
Armenia
was the only cruise liner in port, there were a dozen other cargo freighters from outside the USSR, and their crews had no trouble wandering ashore.

The tourists of the cruise ship, cooped aboard since Varna, went down the gangway like a flock of birds, and two Russian immigration officials at the bottom gave their passports a cursory glance and nodded them through. Professor Kelson attracted several looks because of the way he was dressed, but they were approving and friendly glances.

Rather than try to appear inconspicuous, Monk chose to go the other way, the hide-in-plain-sight routine. He wore a cream shirt with string tie, held by a silver clasp; a tan suit of lightweight pants and jacket, and his Stetson, along with cowboy boots.

“My oh my, Professor, you do look smart,” gushed the schoolteacher. “Are you coming with us up the chairlift to the mountaintop?”

“No, ma’am,” said Monk, “I guess I’ll just stroll along the docks and maybe get me a coffee.”

The Intourist guides took their parties off in different directions and left him alone. He walked instead out of the harbor, past the Sea Terminal building and into the town. A number of people glanced at him, but most grinned. A small boy stopped, threw his hands to his side, and did a double fast-draw with imaginary Colt .45s. Monk ruffled his hair.

He had learned that entertainment in the Crimea was rather unvaried. The television was dull as dishwater, and the big treat was the movies. The favorite by miles were the cowboy films permitted by the regime, and here was a real cowboy. Even a militiaman, sleepy in the heat, stared, but when Monk tipped his hat he grinned and threw up a salute. After an hour and a coffee in an open-fronted café, he became convinced he was not being followed, took a taxi from a rank of several, and asked for the Botanical Gardens. With his guidebook, map, and fractured Russian he was so obviously a tourist off one of the ships that the driver nodded and set off. Besides, thousands visited the famous gardens of Yalta.

Monk dismounted in front of the main gate and paid off the taxi driver. He paid in rubles, but added a five-dollar tip and a wink. The driver grinned, nodded, and left.

There was a big crowd in front of the turnstiles, mainly Russian children with their teachers on an educational excursion. Monk waited in line, keeping an eye open for men in shiny suits. There were none. He paid his entrance fee, went through the barrier, and spotted the ice cream booth. Buying a large vanilla cone, he found a secluded park bench, sat down, and started to lick.

A few minutes later a man sat at the other end of the bench, studying a map of the vast gardens. Behind the map, no one could see his lips move. Monk’s lips were moving because he was licking an ice cream.

“So, my friend, how are you?” asked Pyotr Solomin.

“The better for seeing you, old pal,” muttered Monk. “Tell me, are we under surveillance?”

“No. I have been here for an hour. You were not followed. Nor I.”

“My people are very happy with you, Peter. The details you provide will help shorten the Cold War.”

“I just want to bring the bastards down,” said the Siberian. “Your ice cream is melting. Throw it away, I’ll get two more.”

Monk threw his dripping stub into the trash can nearby. Solomin strolled over to the booth and bought two cones. When he came back the gesture enabled him to sit closer.

“I have something for you. Film. Inside the cover of my map. I will leave it on the bench.”

“Thank you. Why not transmit in Moscow? My people were a bit suspicious,” said Monk.

“Because there is more, but it must be spoken.”

He began to describe what was happening that summer of 1986 inside the Politburo and the Defense Ministry in Moscow. Monk kept a straight face to prevent himself giving a long, low whistle. Solomin talked for half an hour.

“Is this true, Peter? It is really happening at last?”

“As true as I sit here. I have heard the defense minister himself confirm it.”

“It will change many things,” said Monk. “Thank you, old hunter. But I must go.”

As strangers on a park bench who have talked to each other, Monk held out his hand. Solomin stared in fascination.

“What is that?”

It was a ring. Monk did not usually wear rings, but it went with the persona of a Texan. A Navajo ring of turquoise and raw silver of the sort worn all over Texas and New Mexico. He could see that the Udegey tribesman from the Primorskiy Krai loved it. On a gesture Monk slipped it from his hand and gave it to the Siberian.

“For me?” asked Solomin.

He had never asked for money and Monk had guessed he would give offense if he offered it. From the Siberian’s expression the ring was more than recompense, a hundred dollars worth of turquoise and silver hacked from the hills of New Mexico and crafted by Ute or Navajo silversmiths.

Aware that an embrace was impossible in public, Monk turned to go. He looked back. Peter Solomin had slipped the ring onto the small finger of his left hand and was admiring it. It was the last image Monk had of the hunter from the east.

The
Armenia
sailed into Odessa and discharged its human cargo. Customs examined every suitcase but they were only looking for anti-Soviet printed material. Monk had been told they never did a body search of a foreign tourist unless the KGB was in charge, and that would be for a very special reason.

Monk had his rows of tiny transparencies between two layers of plaster tape adhering to one buttock With the other Americans Monk closed his suitcase and all were hustled by the Intourist guide through the formalities and onto the Moscow train.

In the capital the next day Monk dropped off his consignment at the embassy, whence it would come home to Langley in the diplomatic bag, and flew back to the States. He had a very long report to write.

CHAPTER 7

“GOOD EVENING, BRITISH EMBASSY,” SAID THE OPERATOR
on Sofiskaya Quay.

“Schto?”
said a bewildered voice at the other end of the line.

“Dobri vecher, Angliyskoye Posolstvo,”
the operator repeated in Russian.

“I want the Bolshoi Theatre ticket office,” said the voice.

“I’m afraid you have the wrong number, caller,” the operator said, and hung up.

The listeners at the bank of monitors in the headquarters of FAPSI, the Russian electronic eavesdropping agency, heard the call and logged it, but otherwise thought no more of it. Wrong numbers were two a penny.

Inside the embassy the operator ignored the flashing lights of two more incoming calls, consulted a small notebook, and dialed an internal number.