It had to happen eventually, he knew. Sure, everything had gone smoothly the whole time he’d run this agent, but sooner or later something happened. Random chance, he told himself. Eventually the dice would come up the wrong way. When he’d first been assigned here and learned the operational history of CARDINAL, he’d marveled that the man had lasted so long, that he’d rejected at least three offers for breakout. How far could one man push his luck? The old bastard must have thought he was invincible. Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud, Foley thought.
He put it aside and continued with the task of the day. By evening, the courier was heading west with a new CARDINAL report.
“It’s on the way,” Ritter told the Director of Central Intelligence.
“Thank God.” Judge Moore smiled. “Now let’s concentrate on getting him the hell out of there.”
“Clark’s being briefed. He flies over to England tomorrow, and he meets the submarine the day after that.”
“That’s another one who’s pushed his luck,” the Judge observed.
“The best we got,” Ritter replied.
“It’s not enough to move with,” Vatutin told the Chairman after outlining the results of his surveillance and search. “I’m assigning more people to the operation. We’ve also placed listening devices in Filitov’s apartment—”
“And this other colonel?”
“Bondarenko? We were unable to get in there. His wife does not work and stays home all day. We learned today that the man runs a few kilometers every morning, and some additional men have been assigned to this case also. The only information we have at present is a clean record—indeed, an exemplary one—and a goodly portion of ambition. He is now the official Ministry representative to Bright Star, and as you see from the diary pages, an enthusiastic supporter of the project.”
“Your feeling for the man?” The Chairman’s questions were delivered in a curt but not menacing voice. He was a busy man who guarded his time.
“So far, nothing that would lead us to suspect anything. He was decorated for service in Afghanistan; he took command of a Spetznaz group that was ambushed and fought off a determined bandit attack. While at this Bright Star place, he upbraided the KGB guard force for laxness, but his formal report to the Ministry explained why, and it is hard to fault his reasons.”
“Is anything being done about it?” Gerasimov asked.
“The officer who was sent out to discuss the matter was killed in a plane crash in Afghanistan. Another officer will be sent out shortly, they tell me.”
“The bath attendant?”
“We are still looking for him. No results as yet. Everything is covered: airports, train stations, everything. If anything breaks, I’ll report to you immediately.”
“Very well. Dismissed, Colonel.” Gerasimov went back to the papers on his desk.
The Chairman of the Committee for State Security allowed himself a smile after Vatutin left. He was amazed at how well things were going. The masterstroke was the Vaneyeva matter. It wasn’t often that you uncovered a spy ring in Moscow, and when you did so, the congratulations were always mixed with the question: Why did it take you so long? That wouldn’t happen this time. No, not with Vaneyeva’s father about to be appointed to the Politburo. And Secretary Narmonov thought that he’d be loyal to the man who’d arranged the promotion. Narmonov, with all his dreams of reducing arms, of loosening the grip of the Party on the life of the nation, of “liberalizing” what had been bequeathed to the Party . . . Gerasimov was going to change all that.
It wouldn’t be easy, of course. Gerasimov had only three firm allies on the Politburo, but among them was Alexandrov, the ideologue whom the Secretary had been unable to retire after he’d changed allegiance. And now he had another, one quite unknown to the Comrade General Secretary. On the other hand, Narmonov had the Army behind him.
That was a legacy of Mathias Rust, the German teenager who’d landed his rented Cessna in Red Square. Narmonov was a shrewd operator. Rust had flown into the Soviet Union on Border Guards Day, a coincidence that he could not explain—and Narmonov had denied KGB the opportunity to interrogate the hooligan properly! Gerasimov still growled about that. The young man had staged his flight on the only day in the year when one could be sure that the KGB’s vast force of border guards would be gloriously drunk. That had got him across the Gulf of Finland undetected. Then the air defense command, Voyska PVO, had failed to detect him, and the child had landed right in front of St. Basil’s!
General Secretary Narmonov had acted quickly after that: firing the chief of Voyska PVO and Defense Minister Sokolov after a stormy Politburo session where Gerasimov had been unable to raise any objections, lest he endanger his own position. The new Defense Minister, D, T. Yazov, was the Secretary’s man, a nobody from far down the numerical list of senior officers; a man who, having failed to earn his post, depended on the Secretary to stay there. That had covered Narmonov’s most vulnerable flank. The complication it added now was that Yazov was still learning his job, and he obviously depended on old hands like Filitov to teach it to him.
And Vatutin thinks that this is merely a counterespionage case, Gerasimov grunted to himself.
The security procedures that revolved around CARDINAL data precluded Foley from sending any information in the normal way. Even one-time-pad ciphers, which were theoretically unbreakable, were denied him. So the cover sheet on the latest report would warn the Δ fraternity that the data being dispatched wasn’t quite what was expected.
That realization lifted Bob Ritter right off his chair. He made his photocopies and destroyed the originals before walking to Judge Moore’s office. Greer and Ryan were already there.
“He ran out of film,” the DDO said as soon as the door was closed.
“What?” Moore asked.
“Something new came in. It seems that our KGB colleagues have an agent inside Tea Clipper who just gave them most of the design work on this new gollywog mirror gadget, and CARDINAL decided that that was more important. He didn’t have enough film left for everything, so he prioritized on what the KGB is up to. We only have half of what their laser system looks like.”
“Half might be enough,” Ryan observed. That drew a scowl.
Ritter was not the least bit happy that Ryan was now Δ-cleared.
“He discusses the effects of the design change, but there’s nothing about the change itself.”
“Can we identify the source of the leak on our side?” Admiral Greer asked.
“Maybe. It’s somebody who really understands mirrors. Parks has to see this right quick. Ryan, you’ve actually been there. What do you think?”
“The test I watched validated the performance of the mirror and the computer software that runs it. If the Russians can duplicate it—well, we know they have the laser part down pat, don’t we?” He stopped for a moment. “Gentlemen, this is scary. If the Russians get there first, it blows away all the arms-control criteria, and it faces us with a deteriorating strategic situation. I mean, it would take several years before the problem manifests itself, but . . .”
“Well, if our man can get another goddamned film cassette,” the Deputy Director for Operations said, “we can get to work on it ourselves. The good news is that this Bondarenko guy that Misha selected to run the laser desk at the Ministry will report to our man regularly on what’s happening. The bad news—”
“Well, we don’t have to go into that now,” Judge Moore said. Ryan didn’t need to know any of that, his eyes told Ritter, who nodded instant agreement. “Jack, you said you had something else?”
“There’s going to be a new appointment to the Politburo Monday—Ilya Arkadyevich Vaneyev. Age sixty-three, widower. One daughter, Svetlana, who works at GOSPLAN; she’s divorced, with one child. Vaneyev is a pretty straight guy, honest by their standards, not much in the way of dirty laundry that we know about. He’s moving up from a Central Committee slot. He’s the guy who took over the agricultural post that Narmonov held and did fairly well at it. The thinking is that he’s going to be Narmonov’s man. That gives him four full voting members of the Politburo who belong to him, one more than the Alexandrov faction, and—” He stopped when he saw the pained looks on the other three faces in the office.
“Something wrong?”
“That daughter of his. She’s on Sir Basil’s payroll,” Judge Moore told him.
“Terminate the contract,” Ryan said. “It would be nice to have that kind of source, but that kind of scandal now would endanger Narmonov. Put her into retirement. Reactivate her in a few years, maybe, but right now shut her the hell off.”