The Falstaff Enigma (19 page)

"I can sum up your psychological analysis by saying that you are viewed as a deeply introspective and intelligent man who fears to reveal himself to anybody but who will dedicate himself to a goal, a purpose. Your goal has become the perpetuation of Israel and you are fanatical about this – a secular version of a religious zealot.

"As for recent activity, there is a report on your being the case officer for a Russian physicist, Alexandr Govenin. The report goes into some speculation about how you botched your assignment and allowed an Arab terrorist squad to kill the physicist."

Borskov closed the folder and placed both of them on the table in front of him. "By the way, I verified your identities with the fingerprints – but I also burned them immediately thereafter. No one knows who you are but myself and the two men who drove you here. The other KGB men who caught and interrogated you have been ordered to forget tonight. No reports will be made, only some gossip.
I applaud you both for sticking to your cover throughout the, shall we say, unpleasantness.

"Now you are both no doubt wondering what you are doing in the home of a top KGB officer in Moscow, being told sensitive information when you would have expected to be thrown into a dungeon in Siberia to never be heard from again. As I have mentioned in
passing," he said while removing his glasses, "you are immensely valuable to me. You have come here in search of answers to questions generated by an old physicist who died in Tel Aviv, and I am going to provide those answers. When you know them, you will understand why we must work together."

He rose and picked up the two folders. "Would you like something to drink? I suggest caffeine since we may be here until late."

"Do you have tea?" asked Austin.

"Straight from London. Sugar?"

"Please."

"Mr. Margolis?"

"Coffee."

Borskov left the room and returned ten minutes later with a tray carrying two cups of coffee, a cup of tea and a small porcelain bowl of sugar.
The folders had been deposited elsewhere.

"Let me start by saying that the most recent report on you, Mr. Margolis, is correct in pointing out your error; however, deliberately wrong in mentioning the killers of Mr. Govenin. He was, in fact, killed by a team of specialists recruited from within the KGB. This team consisted of five men led by one Leonid Sorovin, who is also known as Leonid Alexandrevich."

Leonid Alexandrevich. John Kemp. Ankara. The embassy. General Poltovsky. Death
. ‘
I saw Alexandrevich the day after the General defected … the assault team was ready to go …’ John Kemp was right all along! The embassy was attacked by a goddamned Russian assault team!

“Is there a problem, Mr. Austin?"
Borskov asked his new guest.

"You damn well better belie
ve there's a big problem here.” The analyst had adrenalin pumping through his body. His hands started to shake. As always, a few beads of sweat formed on his upper lip. He thought carefully before speaking again. "Right now you are trying to convince us that you want to work with us and that this isn't just a complicated KGB plot to garner trivial information from a couple of disowned intelligence operatives who are in Moscow for reasons they don't even know.” Austin paused to take a breath. “Well, you have an opportunity to convince me, at least, by telling me something that you would reveal only if you are either legitimate or you intend to kill us." David was a little stunned. His mind was racing through scenarios, trying desperately to get ahead of the situation. But he decided to trust Austin and let him follow this tack. Austin continued, "Now finish what you just started."

"About the killing of Govenin?"

"No, Mr. Borskov. Leonid Alexandrevich. Tell me about Leonid Alexandrevich."

"I don't understand."

"You do understand. There's a hell of a lot more about Alexandrevich and his team of assassins."

Borskov remained quiet; uncomfortable and caught off guard. Austin was not sure whether the high-ranking KGB officer knew about the attac
k on the embassy or not. The American had no choice, he had to press the matter. "In your file on me, you must have had a report on where I was on May 13, yet you did not mention it. Why?"

“Yes, you’re right. You were in the embassy in Ankara when it was blown up. It is assumed you were there to talk to General Poltovsky. I did no
t mention it only to save time. I hoped – and still hope – to be able to talk to you later about how you came to be here, something that obviously goes beyond just being a friend of Mr. Margolis.”

"Who was it who attacked the embassy?" Austin
finally asked.

"I don't understand. It's well known that an Armenian liberation group is responsible."

Something was wrong and Austin picked it up. It wasn't Borskov’s response, but it was how the response was made. The minor inflections that reveal inner thoughts. The response had not been a mere reaction; it had been calculated, with every word spoken for a deliberate effect. "No, Mr. Borskov, tell us the truth as you know it or lock us away in the Lubyanka, because I swear to you that I will not cooperate otherwise."

Austin had played his cards and Borskov knew that the analyst meant what he said. "You seem to want me to confirm something that you have a strong conviction about." Borskov paused, studying Austin's face. "Okay, Mr. Austin, I will tell you what you want to hear, but first let me say that should you use what I tell you against my country, then you will be signing a death warrant against yourselves and your families." The KGB officer's voice had changed dramatically. It had lost the buoyant quality of a man in control and assumed the threatening tone of a man who was backed against a wall and was afraid.
Convenient allies were now enemies again – at least for a brief moment.

"Leonid Alexandrevich Sorovin was in charge of a special group of KGB agents who planted the car bomb that destroyed the US embassy in Ankara."

Both Austin and Margolis slumped back in the sofa. The analyst bent his head back and looked at the ceiling. The last flickers of light from the fire illuminated the plaster ceiling in a soft orange. "World War III," Austin said in a hushed voice. "If the American public knew that, it would lead to World War III."

"Exactly," Borskov
replied. "That is why we must work together. Unless you want to witness the end of civilization.

“Now let me explain to you
both what is happening right now inside the Soviet Union. I will start with what has happened to me.”

Borskov shifted in his chair, searching for a more comfortable position.
He paused to gather  his thoughts. He had a story to tell. "I have been a colonel in the KGB for three years now. During this time I was responsible for intelligence gathering in all of the communist countries of Eastern Europe. Six months ago I was relieved of my position very abruptly. I could not understand why this was done because I felt I had performed well and I knew that my superior respected my abilities. After a few days of pondering, I came to the conclusion that, even though my network had correctly predicted everything that has occurred in Poland, they still wanted a scapegoat. I was available and, unfortunately for me, a logical choice. I was blamed for allowing Lech Walesa to form Solidarity.

"After two weeks in limbo, I was notified that I was now
in charge of the Seventh Directorate, Moscow District. This is the KGB unit responsible for surveillance of both citizens and foreigners alike. For someone who had been, say, a field agent, this would be a big promotion, but for me, it amounted to a sizable demotion. You see, in my old position I was on a path to becoming the head of the First Directorate, the foreign espionage unit.” Borskov paused and pondered the career he had been expecting until six months earlier. “On the other hand, I was happy to be working at all, given the circumstances, and it was that fact that first made me suspect that perhaps there were other reasons why I had been removed.

“
In the Soviet Union today finding scapegoats is an art mastered by those who get ahead. The problem is that when you are playing on the level at which I was operating, a scapegoat is not to be taken lightly. You either accuse someone and then crush him, or you remain silent. If you leave your victim with any power base, then you have an enemy who can, and certainly will, strike back.

"This, of course, was simply an anomaly
that went unexplained. As for the man who replaced me, he was a staunch hardliner who had little experience in intelligence coordination. Again, this was unusual but plausible, given the circumstances. But two months after I left that post, one of my best operatives met me for lunch and told me a few stories of life under his new commander. He told me that everyone who was moderate at all was being sacked and replaced by hard-line conservatives. He then told me he was certain that my old assistant had been killed in a supposed auto accident in the East German countryside. My assistant was very liberal in his ideas and was a man of conviction who was likely to speak out if he didn't like what he saw. The man who told me this was one of the most competent field operatives I have ever known. He disappeared one month ago.

"Until six weeks ago, my reaction was that Moscow had decided to take a sterner stance with East Europe and I and my department were where they started.
The only thing that truly worried me was the possible murder of my assistant. Since the day Brezhnev took over, the KGB never – and I mean never – kills its own unless the person in question is a traitor who could do serious damage. This is the code in the KGB. My assistant was as loyal as they come.

"Six weeks ago, an incident happened that altered my view of this whole thing. I had been requested by the Army to have my men follow an Army major general who was suspected of providing the Americans with low-level ciphers. This was General Pyotr Timenko. He was on leave in Moscow for a week. On the third day of surveillance, the major was standing in the middle of a crowd waiting on a street corner for a light to change. My man was also in the crowd. As the light turned green, the general let out a short exclamation of pain and fell to one knee. My man watched as a man in a black overcoat with an umbrella headed across the street. That man had been standing behind the general
. My man radioed his back-up and had an ambulance called in while he followed the man in the overcoat. Briefly, he caught the man in the overcoat and the general was dead when the ambulance arrived. The autopsy showed a heart attack.

"The man we caught had no identification and would not speak. We tested his umbrella and it had a fiber on the tip that came from the general's trousers. Timenko had been poisoned with a toxin derived from shellfish poison that brings on heart attacks and is virtually undetectable. It is the current fashionable KGB assassination technique."

Borskov took a sip of coffee before continuing. "An hour after we had caught the killer, a KGB officer arrived at my department in the Lubyanka, which is where you were being held before. He had orders endorsed by the Supreme Soviet that called for the transfer of this assassin to his control. In addition, no report was to be made. I had to comply – one does not question orders bearing the seal of the Supreme Soviet. I did not recognize the man with the orders but one of my men did. It was Leonid Sorovin.

"I immediately ran a check on the general and Sorovin. We never learned the assassin's identity. The next day, my men told me that they could find nothing at all incriminating the general
. However, they realized that he was a senior adjutant to Marshal Vazhnevsky and was known to have the marshal's ear. He was also a man who advocated peaceful co-existence.

“On Sorovin, my men found that he was an Army commando in the seventies and often talked about taking a tough stance
against the West. Beyond that, there was nothing – no information on file. The man who recognized Sorovin had been to a training camp a year earlier where Sorovin taught demolitions and assassination techniques.

"Two days later, the news hit that General Ivan Zhuran and a top KGB analyst were killed in a plane crash south of Murmansk. Both men were known for their belief in accommodation with the West and liberalization of the economy. This news has still not been confirmed officially.

"Is the pattern becoming apparent, gentlemen?" asked Borskov, rhetorically. "I'm afraid it's all too apparent. But still, I could not be sure if the pattern was indeed a pattern or only a series of connected incidents destined to become nonevents, or even random coincidences materializing into significance only in the mind of a betrayed and bitter career officer.

"I had to wait almost two weeks for another event, and I can tell you that I
was not prepared for this one. On the night of April 28 an old friend knocked on my door about midnight. I had saved his life during the Great Patriotic War and also saved his son from acute embarrassment after an indiscretion which is unimportant now. I trust this man with my life. He is an officer in the KGB and acts as a liaison between the Army and us. As such, he has unusual freedom to travel.

"Earlier that day, he had flown to Kiev to meet Marshal Vazhnevsky and accompany him to Moscow in order to brief him on the standard reports. Very routine. At the airport he had a car and driver waiting and headed out to the field headquarters, which at that time was in a wooded area just south of the city. He arrived at a checkpoint about one mile from the
general's encampment. He was told by the two guards that Vazhnevsky and his staff had left an hour earlier for the airport and were probably taking off as they spoke. The guards claimed they had standing orders not to allow anyone to pass.