A Shadow in Moscow, page 26
George Milner. Her new handler.
Reginald, upon announcing his retirement the year before, told Ingrid he had personally handpicked his replacement. A new officer, “young, eager, and even a little in awe of you.”
The young man—twenty-five years old if a day—held up a bag. “The ambassador sends his compliments and his fish for your dinner.”
“Thank you.” She took the bag. There was no way she would have time to do all that was needed and still make it to the fishmonger without raising Leo’s suspicions.
Reginald gestured for George to continue. Ingrid sent him a sharp glance, to which she received a small dip of his chin in reply. This was it. Right here. Right now. The changing of the guard.
George registered none of this. He was busy pulling out a pad of paper and a pen. “We’ll get acquainted another time. Tell me what you need.”
Ingrid dove in. “You need to get ten thousand US dollars and two sets of travel documents, one readily available and the second set sewn into a black bag’s side lining for extraction. Use the name Dolina Jankowski for the second set. Drop the bag at 6:55 a.m. at Dead Drop Site 8. US dollars, not British pounds, as they are easier to trade.”
“For your housekeeper, Dolores?”
“Yes. She’s been compromised.” Ingrid took a breath. “I’ve compromised her and the KGB will begin a full-scale hunt by tomorrow midmorning at the latest. It’ll take them a few hours to get through the bureaucracy, but Leo is tense and he may be able to set things in motion by tonight.”
“It’s awfully tight.”
Ingrid stared at him.
George’s gaze shifted from one of consternation and questioning to eyes wide with excitement, like a kid being let into the game. “Consider it done. I can do this.”
Ingrid recounted the details one last time, picked up her fish, and left—praying her new, young handler was right.
* * *
Young George got the job done.
How he’d done it and on such short notice, Ingrid never learned. Because she never asked. All she knew was that two weeks later she received a postcard from “Svetlana” saying hello.
Ingrid had told Dolores of Svetlana and their friendship in Vienna all those years before, and how she was the one who had introduced her to Leo. Dolores also knew that for years Svetlana and Ingrid exchanged postcards to keep in touch. But the final detail, the one only Dolores knew, was that Svetlana hadn’t sent a postcard in over five years.
Ingrid sat holding the postcard. It was a plain card postmarked in Vilnius. Noticing that, she felt the easing of the tight, hard knot that had twisted her gut for two weeks. With it, she felt the tension in her neck, her shoulders, and her back release as well. She stood to stretch, stepping toward the window, and watched the summer sunshine pour a warm yellow light like soft butter onto the room’s wood flooring. For the first time in years she felt herself relax. Truly relax, if only for a moment. Dolores was safe. And for the first time since hearing that Reginald was retiring the year before, Ingrid knew she’d be okay.
She had chided herself for her selfishness many times. After all, Reginald needed to retire. He was almost seventy years old, with a heart condition. It was time, but how she would miss him. Every day. With every breath.
It was a delicate dance, after all, this marriage of sorts between handler and agent. While not amorous, it was a romance—a bond and trust like no other. And she wanted the best for him, as she did for anyone she loved—years ahead with his wife, children, and grandchildren.
Now, for the first time, she knew the best for him could be the best for her as well. Young Milner had gumption and energy, and he had her back—which was a good thing, as they had a problem. Someone had sent her information on too quickly and questions were being posed, and fingers pointed, much too close to home.
By slowly trickling her intel and insights, Reginald and Adam had not only protected her as the source but also been able to hide the truth of how high-grade her intelligence really was. But recently the name of a top-level promotion within the Presidium had been revealed too quickly, and now everything was jeopardized. Only someone in Moscow could have learned that detail so soon, and Leo wondered who that might be.
Ingrid left a red wax mark behind a trash bin in Sokolniki Park, calling for a face-to-face meeting. She wondered if Reginald had made an error and tried to clear the decks too quickly, wanting to pass a clean slate to Milner. She didn’t plan to ask, but she did need to deal with it.
When she met with George, she got straight to the point. “You need to pass something teasing along. A dangle that circles back. Not too close, but it must land here in Moscow.”
“It’s too dangerous. We should stand down and let all the intel grow cold. We’ll start again in the winter.”
“That’s what’s expected. It won’t diffuse the light; it’ll focus it.” Ingrid shook her head. “I need to keep Dolores safe. No one can wonder. I have just the teaser for you from an embassy cocktail party . . .”
Confirmation of George’s success, again, came quickly. A week later, Leo arrived home visibly relaxed.
“Good day?” Ingrid busied herself in the kitchen.
“Very good. We haven’t found the leak, but it’s not me . . . Something recent and completely out of my purview came through the same lines. It was the same kind of political gossip, so this traitor is well informed, but it’s not me. I hadn’t heard any of it. KGB Counterintelligence confirmed it came from the Dutch embassy. The KGB will certainly have their next party well monitored.” Leo laid his bag on the counter and paused until Ingrid gave him her attention. “I’m sorry about Dolores, Inga. You valued her.”
Ingrid shrugged, feigning the nonchalance that had become the hallmark of her character. She bent to pull her kulebyaka from the oven. “I did. Will you continue to search for her?”
“There’s no need. Other than my curiosity, it’s of no concern.” Leo breathed deep. “She hasn’t shown up anywhere between here and Kraków, and without money, there’s nowhere else for her to go. I’m beginning to wonder if you were right all along and I was, perhaps, too strident that day. She won’t find good work without papers, so she may return yet.” He canvassed the kitchen, a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. “I’m just pleased it’s over.”
Ingrid pointed toward the kitchen door. It was the first time Leo had smiled in weeks, and the gift was for Anya, not for her. She wanted no part of it. “Go say hello to your beautiful girl . . . Anya’s in her room doing homework.” As Leo turned away, Ingrid called him back. “Tell her something about Dolores. She loved her and has been asking.”
“She went home to Kraków?”
“Without saying goodbye?” Ingrid’s tone made it clear their clever daughter was not going to believe that.
“Why not? We weren’t friends or even family. There’s no reason she’d give us special consideration.”
“Of course not. You are perfectly right.” Ingrid turned back to the stove.
Leo stepped behind her. “Another special dinner?”
“Not special. I have simply enjoyed cooking this week.” She inhaled the scent of one of Russia’s greatest culinary creations, a large fish pie made with salmon, sturgeon, buckwheat, mushrooms, hard-boiled eggs, and vegetables.
Yes, George had done it. He leaked tiny whispers, gleaned by eavesdropping on an intoxicated Swede at a Dutch embassy event, and sent them around the globe before landing them in Moscow. With that morsel the KGB’s spotlight had quickly shifted from Ingrid’s home to foreign Western shores.
Dolores was safe—and that was worth celebrating for an entire week.
Twenty-One
Anya
Vienna
November 10, 1983
“Excuse me? Is Comrade Minister Petrov busy? Did he reschedule this meeting?” I stand at the doorway to my now-usual conference room in our Austrian embassy, another huge table of pastries beside me.
The green-uniformed KGB guard’s head bounces up. He stares at me like I’m a ghost, an anomaly, a problem. “You’re still here?”
“Of course I am.” I gesture back into the room. My papers are arranged in neat piles at every seat. “This meeting should have started fifteen minutes ago.”
The guard surges from his desk and toward me with such alacrity I stumble back. “Come with me.” He follows me into the room and scans the table. It’s truly an impressive display of drawings and numbers and terribly official-looking papers. I can tell the young man feels out of his depth.
“You need to leave.”
I blink, sensing something has gone horribly wrong. I point to the table. “You need to put all this in the embassy vault.” I hastily gather my piles into a single stack and hand it to him. He wears a brass name badge, as do all embassy guards. “Dubow?” He raises his eyes from the pages to my face. “I am giving these to you. They are in your care now. Do you understand?”
“I will secure them.” With his free hand to my elbow, he leads me out into the hallway again and calls to another guard.
Without words, this one hustles me out the embassy’s back door and into a car. Minutes after that, the car pulls up to the airport’s cargo terminal, and I’m led to a jump seat in the back of a cargo jumbo liner. There are a few others in the plane’s cavernous hold with me, and though I have questions, I don’t ask them. No one talks. There is no eye contact. Everyone is cold, quiet, and stares straight ahead.
Hours later, after being shuttled off the plane in silence, I arrive at work and find the doors locked. Fear envelops me. There’s one place I might find answers—as no one in my world will provide any.
Peter.
I notice the crumpled cigarette packet while still a few meters from the trash bin. I stop and dig through my bag for a scrap of paper, anything I can throw away. I need to make bending down beside the bin seem natural—even today, especially today.
There are a few memos and a pamphlet for some talk at the Ministry of Commerce I crumple and pitch toward the bin. They come so close to dropping inside I almost moan. One bounces off the edge and falls close to the packet.
I bend and scoop both up. I palm the packet, drop the paper into the bin, and continue walking. As I walk I slide the packet into my bag and pull the note from inside. Peter wants to meet. Now.
It takes an hour to be sure I’m not being tailed. But it needn’t have. The world feels normal. I canvass the park, the streets, and the stores as I walk, as I hop on and off a bus, as I cross through an alley and come out the other side. I see no one twice. I sense no one following. I don’t even catch sight of any spot surveillance. No one appears tense, wary, or dour. At least no more so than any other day.
Peter pulls me inside. “Good work. Checking today.”
“I wasn’t supposed to be in town. What’s going on?”
“The Soviets believe ABLEARCHER is real. NATO was warned about this, but they still went through with the exercises as originally delineated. We are on the brink of nuclear war because NATO wouldn’t listen.”
“Who is Able Archer?” I shove Peter’s shoulder. He’s not making any sense. “Listen to what? To whom?”
He waves a hand toward the small kitchen table. It’s our meeting spot of choice as the kitchen has no windows. I slide a chair from under the table and drop into it.
Peter sits, arms crossed. It’s not an overtly protective or aggressive gesture. It’s a little of both. He’s angry and he’s scared. “Not a who. A what. ABLEARCHER ’83 is the code name for a series of nuclear drills NATO is running out of Casteau, Belgium. But the Soviets believe they are real.”
“How real?”
“So real all Soviet personnel have been called back to Moscow. So real the Soviet military opened missile silos this morning across the border republics. So real . . . We are, no joke, on the brink of a global nuclear war.”
“You said NATO had been warned?”
“We got intel a couple months ago. LUMEN advised that the West needed to stand down—in drills, funding, rhetoric, everything. He reported that Soviet paranoia had reached a frenzied, pathological level. He shared details on Operation RYAN.” I widen my eyes as I have no clue what that is. Peter interprets it into Russian. “Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie.”
“Operation Nuclear Missile Attack?”
“The KGB has itself so wrapped around its own paranoia that they’re seeing bogeymen in diplomats and nuclear threats in vitriolic talk. Basically it’s a KGB operation that rewards operatives for reporting evidence that the West is planning a first-strike offensive. To find anything, even just a rumor, secures promotions, gifts, privileges. Andropov has started a witch hunt, and his operatives are creating the witches.”
“What do I do?”
“Pray.” Peter stares at me. “And against my better judgment, I’m to give you this.” He reaches to the counter and hands me a small box.
I open it. “No,” I whisper on a puff of surprise.
“I sent your camera request up the flagpole. I expected it to get shot down, as it’s a terrible idea, but here we are.” He crosses his arms again. Peter is not pleased with the world, his bosses, or me right now. “Ames got back to me about O’Neill too. He’s not CIA, Anya.”
I hold the camera in my hands. “He’s not?” For all I’ve just been told, my mind drifts to Scott. I want to hug him, kiss him, apologize for ever doubting him.
“Anya,” Peter barks at me. “Focus. What are you going to do if you get searched? No story about following a crush to the Hotel Metropol will get you out of owning that.”
I have no reply but assure him I’ll figure it out. I leave the safe house with an odd disconnected feeling. It’s like informational overload. One, Scott’s not CIA. I want to believe him and in him. The surety that what we had was real saturates me. Two, we’re on the edge of nuclear war. Can that be true? For all the angry talk, my professors constantly made it clear that the US never anticipated being the aggressor—and most of them worked second jobs as advisors within the administration. Our leadership must see that too. I mean, it’s all talk, right? Propaganda. Posturing. On both sides. The Americans want to flex their brawn and the Politburo wants to ignite our loyalty and scare us into conformity. Or does Operation RYAN reflect what the KGB and, by extension, the Party really believe? Three, Peter just handed me the ultimate tool. How do I use it?
Upon entering my apartment I walk straight to my bathroom and turn on the shower. My search last week revealed two bugs, which I left in place, and I can’t assume Stanslych didn’t leave more.
The shower covers the noise of me playing with the camera. Within a few minutes, I feel like I’ve figured out how to get the film loaded, spooled, and unloaded. And using receipts and other random papers in my bag, I discover that about thirty-five centimeters is the best distance between the subject and camera for a perfect shot. I’m ready. I turn off the shower, slip the camera under a floorboard in my bedroom, and make dinner.
While making solyanka, and enough of the hearty soup to last me a few nights, I find my mind drifting back to my visit home last week and my mother’s statement that I cannot reject what is. That simple truth I can grasp. A fact is a fact, no matter how I feel about it. But then she went further, as Tolstoy goes further with Levin, and there I get lost.
I am not to resign myself to those facts, but I am to consent to their reality? My attitude toward them changes my position within them?
I wrestle with this until another line, this time from a Western novel, comes to me, forcing me to laugh my consternation away and finally enjoy my steaming salty soup.
“‘Your defect is to hate everybody.’”
“‘And yours,’” he replied with a smile, “‘is willfully to misunderstand them.’”
* * *
Work is quiet today. Everyone feels something is wrong in the lab and in the world. None of my three office mates even lift a head as I pick up my handbag and head to the bathroom. I take the stairs to the third floor as that’s the bathroom we women use at “that time of the month.” It’s very private, as the lab on that floor lost funding a few months ago.
No one is inside. I quickly check under the counters and run my fingers along the mirror. No bugs that I can tell. No one has reported ever finding any, but you can never be too sure.
I enter the first stall. There is a disgusting floor drain behind the toilet that will be perfect for what I’ve planned.
Before leaving for work, I sealed the camera in a plastic bag with a thin black thread that I left hanging long. I pull it out of my bag now, and after wedging the cover off the drain, willing my breakfast not to come up after seeing all the grime and slime within it, I tie the black string to the drain cover. I then drop the camera down the drain and replace the cover.
I also wiped my prints from it this morning, so I figure the worst that can happen if it gets found is that everyone will get questioned. There’s nothing to link me directly to the camera.
On my way back to my desk, I pause, realizing there’s an opportunity before me. A golden opportunity. I hadn’t been able to memorize a few of the schematics attached to my proposal for Minister Petrov, and I couldn’t risk carrying out the papers. Now I can take pictures of them.
I head to the KGB office, making my plan as I go. My entire presentation sits in our vault. And, as I didn’t get a chance to present it yesterday in Vienna, I should probably review it again.
Grigor sits alone at the desk.
“I need a file from the vault. Number six-three-five-two.”
“Sign here.” He slides the ledger toward me and walks to the back of the office to the vault. He comes back with half the file.
“I also need the schematics.” As he turns, I step forward. “Can I?” I gesture around the desk toward the back of the office. “I don’t need to bother you, but I do need to review everything before presenting to Defense Minister Petrov.”
I hate name-dropping, but sometimes it really helps. Grigor waves me past and sits at the front desk again.
