The Whitehall conference that evening involved the Director General and Deputy Director General of MI-5 and the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in charge of Special Branch. MI-5 in Britain cannot make arrests—only the police can do that. When the Security Service wants someone picked up, the Special Branch is called in to do the honors. The meeting was chaired by the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He started the questioning.
“Who exactly is Mr. Milton-Rice?”
The Deputy Director of MI-5 consulted his notes. “Grade-two civil servant on the staff of the Procurement Office.”
“Pretty low grade?”
“Sensitive work, though. Weapons systems, access to evaluations of new armaments.”
“Mm,” mused the Chairman. “So what do you want?”
“The point is, Tony,” said the Director General, “we have very little to go on. Unexplained payments over a period of years into his account—not enough to hold him, let alone get a conviction. He could plead that he backs the horses, always on track, gets his cash that way. Of course, he might confess. Then again, he might not.”
The policeman nodded his agreement. Without a confession, he would have a bad time trying to persuade the Crown Prosecution Office even to bring a case. He doubted the man who had denounced Milton-Rice, whoever he might be, would ever appear in court as a witness.
“We’d like to shadow him first,” said the Director General. “Around the clock. If he makes one contact with the Russians, he’s in the bag, with or without a confession.”
It was agreed. The watchers, that elite team of MI-5 agents who—on their own turf, at least—are reckoned by all the Western services to be the best tailers in the world, were put on alert to envelop Anthony Milton-Rice the following morning as he approached the Defense Ministry with an invisible surveillance for twenty-four hours in every day.
Anthony Milton-Rice, like so many people with a regular job, had regular habits. He was a man of routine. On workdays he left his house in Addiscombe precisely at ten to eight and walked the half-mile to East Croydon Station—unless it was raining heavily, in which case the bachelor civil servant took a bus. He boarded the same commuter train every day, flashed his season ticket, and rode into London, descending at Victoria Station. From there, it was a short bus ride down Victoria Street to Parliament Square. There he got off and crossed Whitehall to the ministry building.
The morning after the conference about him, he did exactly the same. He did not notice the group of youths who boarded at Norwood Junction. He noticed them when they entered his open-plan carriage, jammed with other commuters. There were screams from the women and shouts of alarm from the men as the teenagers, engaged in an orgy of casual robbery and assault called “steaming,” swept through the carriage snatching women’s handbags and jewelry, demanding men’s wallets at knifepoint, and threatening anyone who seemed to oppose, let alone resist, them.
As the train hissed into the next station up the line, the crowd of two dozen young thugs, still screaming their rage at the world, quit the train and scattered, jumping the barrier and disappearing into the streets of Crystal Palace, leaving behind them hysterical women, badly shaken men, and frustrated Transport Police. No arrests were made—the outrage had been too fast and unforeseen.
The train was delayed, wreaking havoc on the commuter schedules as other trains backed up behind it, while Transport Police boarded to take statements. It was only when they tapped the commuter in the pale-gray raincoat dozing in the corner on his shoulder that the man toppled slowly forward onto the floor. There were further screams as the first blood from the thin stiletto wound to his heart began to seep from beneath the crumpled figure. Mr. Anthony Milton-Rice was very dead.
Ivan’s Café, appropriately named for a meeting with a Russian, was situated in Crondall Street in Shoreditch, and Sam McCready, as always, arrived second, even though he had been the first in the street outside. The reason was that if anyone was being tailed, it would more likely be Keepsake than him. So he always sat for thirty minutes in his car, watched the Russian make the meet, then gave it another fifteen minutes to see if the asset from the Soviet Embassy had suddenly grown a tail.
When McCready entered Ivan’s, he took a cup of tea from the counter and wandered over to the wall where two tables were side by side. Keepsake occupied the one in the corner and was engrossed in Sporting Life. McCready unfolded his Evening Standard and proceeded to study it.
“How was the good General Drozdov?” he asked quietly, his voice lost in the babble of the café and the hissing of the tea urn.
“Amiable and enigmatic,” said the Russian, studying the form of the horses in the three-thirty at Sandown. “I fear he may have been checking us out. I will know more if K-Line decide to visit, or if my own K-Line man gets hyperactive.”
K-Line is the KGB’s internal counterintelligence and security branch, charged not so much with espionage as with keeping a check on other KGB men and looking for internal leaks.
“Have you ever heard of a man called Anthony Milton-Rice?” asked McCready.
“No. Never. Why?”
“You didn’t run him out of your Rezidentsia? A civil servant in the Ministry of Defense?”
“Never heard of him. Never handled his product.”
“Well, he’s dead now. Too late to ask him who did run him. If anyone did. Could he have been run directly from Moscow through the Illegals Directorate?”
“If he was working for us, that’s the only explanation,” muttered the Russian. “He never worked for us in PR-Line. Not out of the London Station. As I say, we never even handled such product. He must have communicated with Moscow via a case officer based here outside the embassy. Why did he die?”
McCready sighed. “I don’t know.”
But he did know that unless it was a remarkable coincidence, someone had to have set it up. Someone who knew the civil servant’s routines, could brief the thugs on his regular train, his appearance—and pay them off. Possibly Milton-Rice had not even worked for the Russians at all. Then why the denunciation? Why the unaccounted-for money? Or perhaps Milton-Rice had indeed spied for Moscow but via a cutout, unknown to Keepsake, who in turn reported directly back to the Illegals Directorate in Moscow. And General Drozdov had just been in town. And he ran the Illegals. ...
“He was denounced,” said McCready. “To us. And then he was dead.”
“Who denounced him?” asked Keepsake. He stirred his tea, though he had no intention of drinking the sweet, milky mixture.
“Colonel Pyotr Orlov,” said McCready quietly.
“Ah,” said Keepsake in a low murmur. “I have something for you there. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Orlov is a loyal and dedicated KGB officer. His defection is as phony as a three-dollar bill. He is a plant, a disinformation agent. And he is well-prepared and very good.”
Now that, thought McCready, is going to cause problems.
Chapter 3
Timothy Edwards listened carefully. McCready’s narration and evaluation lasted thirty minutes. When he had finished, Edwards asked calmly, “And you are quite certain you believe Keepsake?”
McCready had expected this question. Keepsake had worked for the British for four years since he had first approached an SIS officer in Denmark and offered his services as an “agent-in-place,” but this was a world of shadows and suspicions. There was always the possibility, however remote, that Keepsake might be a “double,” his true loyalties still with Moscow. It was precisely the accusation he now made of Orlov.
“It’s been four years,” said McCready. “For four years Keepsake’s product has been tested against every known criterion. It’s pure.”
“Yes, of course,” said Edwards smoothly. “Unfortunately, if one word of this leaked to our Cousins, they would say exactly the opposite—that our man was lying and theirs was for real. The word is, Langley is deeply enamored of this Orlov.”
“I don’t think they should be told about Keepsake,?
?? retorted McCready. He was very protective of the Russian in the embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens. “Besides, Keepsake feels his time may be coming to an end. He has an instinct that suspicions are growing in Moscow that they have a leak somewhere. If they become convinced, it will only be a matter of time before they home in on their London Station. When Keepsake finally comes in from the cold, we can come clean with the Cousins. For the moment, it could be very dangerous to widen the circle who know.”
Edwards made his decision.
“Sam, I agree. But I’m going to see the Chief on this one. He’s up at the Cabinet Office this morning. I’ll catch him later. Stay in touch.”
During the lunch hour, which Edwards spent eating a sparse meal with the Chief in Sir Christopher’s top-floor suite of offices, a military version of the Grumman Gulf stream III landed at the USAF base at Alconbury, situated just north of the market town of Huntingdon in the county of Cambridgeshire. It had taken off at midnight from the Air National Guard base in Trenton, New Jersey, its passengers having arrived from Kentucky and boarded under the cover of darkness and away from the air-base buildings.
In picking Alconbury, Calvin Bailey had chosen well. The base was the home of the 527 “Aggressor” Squadron of the USAF, whose pilots fly F-5 fighters with a very specific role. They are called the Aggressors because the F-5 has a configuration similar to the Russian MIG-29 and the Aggressors play the role of attacking Soviet fighters in midair combat practice with their fellow American and British jet-jockeys. They themselves study and are adept at all the Soviet air-battle tactics, and they so sink themselves into their role that they constantly talk Russian to each other when aloft. Their guns and rockets may be so adapted as to score only electronic hits and misses, but the rest—insignia, flight suits, maneuvers, and jargon—is all pure Russian.
When Roth, Orlov, Kroll, and the rest descended from the Grumman, they were outfitted in the flight suits of the Aggressor Squadron. They passed through unnoticed and were soon ensconced in a single-story building, set aside from the rest, and equipped with living quarters and kitchen, conference rooms, and one electronically bugged room for the debriefing of Colonel Orlov. Roth had a talk with the base commander, and the British team was cleared to be allowed onto the base the following morning. Then somewhat jet-lagged, the American party turned in to get some sleep.
McCready’s phone rang at three P.M. and Edwards asked to see him again.
“Proposals accepted and agreed,” said Edwards. “We back our judgment that Keepsake is telling the truth and that the Americans have themselves a disinformation agent. That said, the problem is that whatever Orlov is here for, we don’t know yet. It seems that for the moment he is producing good product, which makes it unlikely our Cousins would believe us—the more so as the Chief agrees that we cannot reveal the existence, let alone the identity, of Keepsake. So how do you suggest we handle it?”
“Let me have him,” said McCready. “We have right of access. We can ask questions. Joe Roth is in charge, and I know Joe. He’s no fool. Maybe I can push Orlov, push him hard, before Roth cries ‘Enough.’ Sow some seeds of doubt. Get the Cousins to begin to contemplate the notion that he may not be all he seems.”
“All right,” said Edwards. “You take it.”
He made it sound like his own decision, his own act of magnanimity. The reality of his lunch with the Chief, who would be retiring at the end of the year, had been quite different. The ambitious Assistant Chief, who prided himself on his excellent personal relationship with the CIA, had in mind that one day Langley’s approval of him could be a useful aid to his appointment as Chief.
During the lunch, Edwards had proposed a far less skilled but less abrasive debriefer than Sam McCready to handle the matter of Keepsake’s embarrassing denunciation of the CIA’s new treasure. He had been overruled. Sir Christopher, a former colleague in the field, had insisted that the Deceiver whom he had himself appointed be in charge of handling Orlov.
McCready set off for Alconbury by car early the following morning. Denis Gaunt drove. Edwards had cleared McCready’s request that Gaunt sit in on the interrogation of the Russian. In the back of the car sat a woman from MI-5. The Security Service had asked urgently that they too have someone at the meetings with the Russian, since a specific line of questioning would cover the area of Soviet agents working in and against Britain. Alice Daltry was in her early thirties, pretty, and very bright. She still seemed rather overawed by McCready. In their tight, closed world, despite the need-to-know principle, word had leaked of the previous year’s Pankratin affair.
The car also contained a secure telephone. Looking like an ordinary car phone but larger, it could be switched to encrypted mode to communicate with London. There might well be points emerging from the talk with Orlov that would need to be checked with London.
For much of the journey McCready sat silently, staring through the windshield at the unfolding countryside in the early morning, marveling again at the beauty of England in the spring.
He ran his mind back over what Keepsake had told him. In London, according to the Russian, he had been marginally associated years earlier with the first preparatory stages for a deception operation of which Orlov could only be the final fruition. It had been code-named Project Potemkin.
An ironic title, thought McCready, a hint of KGB gallows humor. It almost certainly had been named not after the battleship Potemkin—nor even after Marshal Potemkin, whose name had been bestowed on the battleship—but after the Potemkin Villages.
Years ago, the Empress Catherine the Great, as ruthless a dictator as long-suffering Russia had ever endured, visited the newly conquered Crimea. Fearful of letting her see the shivering, huddled masses in their freezing shacks, her chief minister, Potemkin, had sent carpenters, plasterers, and painters ahead of her route to construct and paint handsome facades of clean, sturdy cottages with smiling, waving peasants in the windows. The shortsighted old queen was delighted by the picture of rural bliss and returned to her palace. Later, laborers dismantled the facades to reveal again the miserable shantytowns behind them. These deceptions were called Potemkin Villages.
“The target is the CIA,” Keepsake had said. He did not know who the exact victim would be or how the sting would be accomplished. The project was not then being handled directly by his department, which had been asked only for peripheral assistance.
“But this has to be Potemkin coming into operation at last,” he had said. “The proof will be in two parts. No information provided by Orlov will ever actually produce massive and irreversible damage to Soviet interests. Second, you will see an enormous loss of morale taking place inside the CIA.”
At the moment, the latter was certainly not the case, mused McCready. Recovering from the undoubted embarrassment of the Urchenko affair, his American friends were riding high, largely due to their newfound asset. He determined to concentrate on the other area.
At the main gate of the air base, McCready offered an identification card (not in his real name) and asked for Joe Roth on a certain phone extension. Minutes later, Roth appeared in an Air Force jeep.
“Sam, good to see you again.”
“Nice to see you back, Joe. That was quite a vacation you took.”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I was given no choice, no chance to explain. It was a question of take the guy and run, or throw him back.”
“That’s okay,” said McCready easily. “All has been explained. All is smoothed over. Let me present my two colleagues.”
Roth reached into the car and shook hands with Gaunt and Daltry. He was relaxed and effusive. He foresaw no problems and was glad the Brits would be sharing in the goodies. He cleared the whole party with the Guard Commander, and they drove in line across the base to the isolated block where the CIA team was housed.
Like many service buildings, it was no architectural gem, but it was functional. A single corridor divided its entire length, from which doors led off to sleeping rooms, an eating room, k
itchens, toilets, and conference rooms. A dozen Air Force police ringed the building, guns visible.
McCready glanced around before entering. He noted that while he and his two colleagues had excited no attention, many of the USAF personnel passing by stared curiously at the circle of armed guards.
“All they’ve managed to do,” he muttered to Gaunt, “is identify the bloody place to any KGB team with a set of binoculars.”
Roth led them to a room in the center of the block. Its windows were closed and shuttered; the only illumination was electric. Easy chairs formed a comfortable group around a coffee table in the center of the room; straight chairs and tables ringed the walls, for the note-takers.
Roth genially gestured to the British party to take the easy chairs and ordered some coffee.
“I’ll go get Minstrel,” he said, “unless you guys want to shoot the breeze first.”
McCready shook his head. “Might as well get on with it, Joe.”
When Roth was out, McCready nodded to Gaunt and Daltry to take chairs by the wall. The message was: Watch and listen, miss nothing. Joe Roth had left the door open. From down the corridor, McCready heard the haunting melody of “Bridge over Troubled Waters.” The sound stopped as someone switched off the tape deck. Then Roth was back. He ushered into the room a chunky, tough-looking man in running shoes, slacks, and a polo sweater.
“Sam, let me present Colonel Pyotr Orlov. Peter, this is Sam McCready.”
The Russian stared at McCready with expressionless eyes. He had heard of him. Most high-ranking officers of the KGB had by then heard of Sam McCready. But he gave no sign. McCready crossed the central carpet, his hand outstretched.
“My dear Colonel Orlov. I am delighted to meet you,” he said with a warm smile.
Coffee was served, and they seated themselves, McCready facing Orlov, Roth to one side. On a side table a tape machine started to turn. There were no microphones on the coffee table. They would have been a distraction. As it was, the tape machine would miss nothing.