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“Let’s get one thing straight at the outset,” Ralph Brooke of the economic committee began, “are you contemplating an assassination of this man Komarov?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because these are seldom achieved and in this case, even if achieved, it would not solve the problem.”

“Why couldn’t it be done, Nigel?”

“I didn’t say couldn’t. Just extremely difficult. The man is exceptionally well guarded. His personal bodyguard and protection squad commander is no fool.”

“But even if it worked, it wouldn’t work?”

“No. The man would be a martyr. Another would step into his shoes and sweep the country. Probably carry out the same program, the legacy of the lost leader.”

“Then, what?”

“All practicing politicians are subject to destabilization. An American word, I believe.”

There were a number of rueful grins. In its day the State Department and the CIA had sought to destabilize several left—wing foreign leaders.

“What would be required?”

“A budget.”

“No problem,” said Saul Nathanson. “Name it.”

“Thank you. Later.”

“And?”

“Some technical backup. Mostly purchasable. And a man.”

“What kind of man?”

“A man to go into Russia and do certain things. A very good man.”

“That’s your province. If, and I say if with advisement, Komarov can be discredited, his popular support culled away from him, what then, Nigel?”

“Actually,” said Irvine, “that is the principal problem. Komarov is not just a charlatan. He is skillful, passionate, and charismatic. He understands and corresponds to the instincts of the Russian people. He is an icon.”

“A what?”

“An icon. Not a religious painting, but a symbol. He stands for something. All nations need something, some person or symbol, to which they can cleave; which can give a disparate mass of people a sense of identity and thus of unity. Without a unifying symbol, people drift into internecine feuds. Russia is vast, with many different ethnic groups. Communism was brutal, but it provided unity. Unity by coercion. So also in Yugoslavia; when the unity by coercion was removed we saw what happened. To achieve unity by volition, there must be that symbol. You have your Old Glory, we our Crown. At the moment Igor Komarov is their icon, and only we know how savagely flawed.”

‘‘And what is his game plan?’’

“Like all demagogues, he will play on their hopes, their desires, their loves, and their hates, but mostly on their fears. That way he will win their hearts. With those he will get the votes, and with the votes the power. He can then use the power to build the machine that will carry out the aims of the Black Manifesto.”

“But if he is destroyed? It’s back to chaos. Even civil war.”

“Probably. Unless one could introduce into the equation another and a better icon. One worthy of the loyalty of the Russian people.”

“There’s no such man. Never has been.”

“Oh, there was,” said Nigel Irvine. “Once, long ago. He was called the Czar of All the Russias.”

Langley, September 1990

COLONEL Turkin, agent Lysander, sent one urgent personal message to Jason Monk. It was on a postcard that showed the open terrace of the Opera Café in East Berlin. The message was simple and innocent. “Hope to see you again, all best wishes, José-Maria.” It had been posted to a CIA safe mailbox in Bonn and the frank said it had been dropped into a mailbox in West Berlin.

The CIA people in Bonn did not know who had sent it; only that it was for Jason Monk and he was in Langley. They forwarded it. That it had been posted in West Berlin meant nothing. Turkin had simply flicked it, fully stamped, through the open window of a car with West Berlin plates heading back into the west. He had simply muttered, “Bitte,” to the startled driver and kept on walking. By the time his tails came around the corner, they had missed it. The kindly Berliner had posted it.

Such hit-and-miss measures are not recommended, but stranger things have happened.

It was the date scrawled above the message that was odd. It was wrong. The card was posted on September 8, and a German or Spaniard would write that as: 8/9/90 with the day first, then the month, then the year. But the date on the card seemed to have been written American-style. It said 9/23/90. To Jason Monk it meant: I need a meet at 9:00
P.M.
on September 23. It was meant to be read in reverse. And the sign-off with a Spanish name meant: This is serious and urgent.

The place was obvious, the terrace of the Opera Café, East Berlin.

On October 3 the final reunification of the city of Berlin was due to take place, along with the reunification of Germany. The writ of the USSR in the east would cease. The West Berlin police would move in and take over. The KGB operation would have to withdraw to a much smaller unit inside the Soviet Embassy on Unter Den Linden. Some of the huge operation would have to be withdrawn to Moscow. Turkin might be going with them. If he wanted to run, now was the time, but he had a wife and son back in Moscow. The autumn school term had just started.

There was something he wanted to say, and he wanted to say it personally to his friend. Urgently. Unlike Turkin, Monk knew of the disappearance of Delphi, Orion, and Pegasus. As the days ticked by he became sick with worry.

¯

WHEN the last guest but one had left, the copies of all the documents save Sir Nigel’s personal copies were burned under supervision until there were only ashes that scattered on the wind.

Irvine left with his host, grateful for the lift in the Grumman back to Washington. From the airplane’s secure phone system he made a call to the D.C. area and set up a lunch with an old friend.

Then he relaxed in the deep leather chair opposite his host.

“I know we are supposed to ask no further questions,” said Saul Nathanson as he poured two glasses of a very fine Chardonnay. “But could I ask you a personal one?”

“My dear chap, of course. Can’t guarantee to answer it though.”

“I’ll fire anyway. You came to Wyoming hoping the council would sanction some kind of action, did you not?”

“Well, I suppose so. But I thought you said it all, better than I could.”

“We were all shocked. Genuinely. But there Were seven Jews around that table. Why
you?”

Nigel Irvine stared down at the passing clouds beneath. Somewhere below them were the vast wheat prairies, even now being harvested. All that food. He saw again another place, far away and long ago; British Tommies puking in the sun, the bulldozer drivers with faces masked against the stench, pushing the mounds of corpses into gaping pits, living skeleton arms coming out from the stinking bunks, human claws asking mutely for food.

“Don’t know really. Been through it once. Don’t want to see it all again. Old-fashioned, I suppose.”

Nathanson laughed.

“Old-fashioned. Okay, I’ll drink to that. Will you be going into Russia yourself?”

“Oh, I don’t see how it can be avoided.”

“Just you take care of yourself, my friend.”

“Saul, in the Service we used to have a saying. There are old agents and there are bold agents; but there are no old, bold agents. I’ll take care.”

¯

AS he was staying in Georgetown, his friend had proposed a pleasant little restaurant of French ambiance called La Chaumière, barely a hundred yards from the Four Seasons Hotel.

Irvine was there first, found a bench nearby, and sat and waited, an old man with silver hair around whom the young roller bladers wove a path.

The chief of the SIS has long been a more hands-on executive than the director of the CIA, and when he used to come to Langley it was with his fellow intelligence professionals, the Deputy Directors for Ops and Intel, with whom he felt the greater empathy. They shared a common bond not always possible with the political appointee from the White House.

The cab drew up and a white-haired American of similar age climbed out and paid. Irvine crossed the street and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Long time no see. How are you, Carey?”

Carey Jordan’s face broke into a grin.

“Nigel, what the hell are you doing here? And why the lunch?”

“You complaining?”

“Absolutely not. Good to see you.”

“Then I’ll tell you inside.”

They were a little early and the lunch crowd had not arrived. The waiter asked if they wanted a smoking or nonsmoking table. Smoking, said Jordan. Irvine raised an eyebrow. Neither of them smoked.

But Jordan knew what he was doing. They were shown to a private booth right at the back where they could talk , unheard.

The waiter brought the menus and a wine list. Both men chose an appetizer, then a meat course. Irvine cast his eye down the list of Bordeaux and spotted an excellent Beychevelle. The waiter beamed; it was not cheap and had been in-house for quite some time. In minutes he was back, offered the label, got a nod, uncorked, and decanted.

“So,” said Carey Jordan when they were alone. “What brings you to this neck of the woods. Nostalgia?”

“Not exactly. A problem, I suppose.”

“Anything to do with those high-and-mighty folks you’ve been conversing with in Wyoming?”

“Ah, Carey, dear Carey, they should never have fired you.”

“I know it. What’s the problem?”

“There’s something serious and rather bad going on in Russia.”

“What else is new?”

“This is. And it’s worse than usual. The official agencies of both our countries have been warned off.”

“Why?”

“Official timidity, I suppose.”

Jordan snorted.

“As I said, what else is new?”

“So ... anyway ... the view last week was that perhaps someone ought to go and have a look.”

“Someone? Despite the warning?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“So why come to me? I’m out of it. Have been these past twelve years.”

“Do you still speak to Langley?”

“No one speaks to Langley anymore.”

“Then that’s why you, Carey. Fact is, I need a man. Able to go into Russia. Without drawing attention.”

“On the black?”

“Afraid so.”

“Against the FSB?”

When Gorbachev, just before his own ouster, broke up the KGB, the First Chief Directorate was renamed the SVR but still carried on as before from its old headquarters at Yazenevo. The Second Chief Directorate, covering internal security, was renamed the FSB.

“Probably nastier than that.”

Carey Jordan chewed on his whitebait, thought, then shook his head.

“No, he wouldn’t go. Never again.”

“Who, pray? Who wouldn’t go?”

“Guy I was thinking of. Also out of it, like me. But not as old. He was good. Cool nerve, very smart, a one-off, a natural. Fired five years ago.”

“He’s still alive?”

“So far as I know. Hey, this wine is good. Not often I get wine like this.”

Irvine topped up his glass.

“What was his name, this fellow who wouldn’t go?”

“Monk. Jason Monk. Spoke Russian like a native. Best goddam agent runner I ever had.”

“Okay, even though he won’t go, tell me about Jason Monk.”

So the old former DDO did that.

East Berlin, September 1990

IT was a warm autumn evening and the café terrace was crowded. Colonel Turkin, in a lightweight suit of German cloth and cut, attracted no attention when he took his seat at a small table close to the sidewalk at the very moment it was vacated by a loving pair of teenagers.

When the waiter cleared away the glasses, he ordered a coffee, opened a German newspaper, and began to read.

Precisely because he had spent his career in counter-intelligence, with its onus on surveillance, he was deemed to be an expert in counter-surveillance. The watchers from the KGB were therefore keeping their distance. But they were there: a man and a woman across the Opera Square, seated on a bench, youthful, carefree, each with a Walkman headset over their ears.

Each could communicate with two cars parked around the corner, passing their observations and receiving instructions. In the two cars were the snatch squad, for the arrest order had finally been given.

Two last pieces of information had tipped the balance against Turkin. In his description, Ames had said Lysander was recruited outside the USSR and spoke Spanish. The language alone gave the Investigation Branch the whole of Latin America plus Spain in their hunt of the records. The alternative candidate, it recently proved, had arrived on his first South American posting, to Ecuador, five years earlier. But Ames had said the recruitment of Lysander took place six years ago.

The second and clinching piece of evidence stemmed from the bright idea of checking all the phone records out of the KGB’s headquarters in East Berlin the night of the abortive raid on the CIA postbox apartment, the night the flat’s occupant had made his getaway one hour before the raid.

The logs revealed a call made from the public phone in the lobby to the same number as the designated apartment. The other suspect had been in Potsdam that night, and the leader of the abortive raid had been Colonel Turkin.

The formal arrest would have taken place earlier but for the fact a very senior officer was expected from Moscow. He had insisted on being present at the arrest, and personally escorting the suspect back to the USSR. Quite suddenly the suspect had left the headquarters canteen, on foot, and the watchers had no choice but to follow.

A Spanish-Moroccan shoe cleaner shuffled along the pavement by the café, gesturing to those in the front row to ask if they wished their shoes cleaned. He received a series of shakes of the head. The East Berliners were not accustomed to see itinerant shoeshine boys at their cafés, and the West Berliners among them mostly believed there were far too many immigrants from the Third World infesting their rich city.

Eventually the shoe cleaner got a nod, whipped his small stool under his backside, and squatted in front of his customer, quickly applying a thick application of black polish to the lace-up brogues. A waiter approached to shoo him away.

“Now he has started, might as well let him finish,” said the customer in accented German. The waiter shrugged and moved off.