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As his chauffeur-driven car swept him back down the quays of the drowsy River Thames toward Vauxhall Cross, Sir Henry Coombs had no choice but to accept the reality of the intergovernmental decision. Once, handshakes had been enough and discretion was both presumed and maintained. For the past decade, with official leaks one of the few growth industries, only signatures were sufficient. And they had a habit of coming back to haunt the signer. No one in London or Washington was prepared to put his signature attributably to an order to its covert services for an “active measure” to prevent the onward march of Igor Alexeivich Komarov.
Vladimir, July 1989
THE American academic Dr. Philip Peters had already entered the USSR once, ostensibly to indulge his harmless passion for the study of Oriental art and old Russian antiquities. Nothing had happened, not an eyebrow had been raised.
Twelve months later even more tourists were pouring into Moscow and the controls were even more relaxed. The question before Monk was whether to use Dr. Peters again. He decided he would.
The letter from Professor Blinov was quite clear. He had secured a rich harvest covering all the scientific questions to which the United States wanted answers. This list had been prepared after intensive discussions with the highest levels of the American research establishment even before Monk had confronted the professor in his room at the San Jose Fairmont and Ivan Blinov had taken it with him. Now he was prepared to deliver. His problem was, it would be hard for him to get to Moscow. And suspicious.
But because Gorki was another city stuffed with scientific institutions, and only ninety minutes by train from Arzamas-16, he could get there. After personal protests, the KGB had lifted his habitual tail whenever he left the nuclear research zone. After all, he reasoned, he had been to California. Why not Gorki? In this he was supported by the political commissar. Without surveillance, he could take a further train to the cathedral city of Vladimir. But that was it. He would have to be home by nightfall. He named July 19 as the day and the rendezvous as the crypt of the Cathedral of the Assumption at noon.
Monk studied the city of Vladimir for two weeks. It was a medieval city famed for two magnificent cathedrals, rich in the paintings of Rublev, the fifteenth-century iconist. The bigger was the Assumption, the smaller the San Demetrius.
Langley’s research department could find no tourist group heading anywhere near Vladimir on the given date. To go as a single tourist would be risky; there was protection in groups. Finally they came up with a party of enthusiasts of Old Russian ecclesiastical architecture engaging in a visit to Moscow in mid-July with a coach trip to the fabulous monastery of Zagorsk on the nineteenth. Dr. Peters joined it.
With his hair the habitual mass of tight gray curls and his guidebook to his nose, Dr. Peters toured the superb cathedrals of the Kremlin for three days. At the end of the third their Intourist guide told them to be in the lobby of their hotel at 7:30 the following morning to board the coach for Zagorsk.
At 7:15 A.M. Dr. Peters sent a note to say he had suffered a violent stomach upset and preferred to remain in bed with his medication. At 8:00 A.M. he quietly left the Metropol and walked to the Kazan Station where he boarded a train for Vladimir. Just before 11:00 A.M. he descended at the cathedral city.
As he expected from his research, there were many parties of tourists already there, for Vladimir contained no state secrets and surveillance of tourists was almost nonexistent. He bought a city guide and wandered around the Cathedral of San Demetrius admiring its walls with its 1,300 bas-reliefs of beasts, birds, flowers, griffins, saints, and prophets. At ten minutes to twelve he wandered the three hundred meters to the Cathedral of the Assumption, and, unchallenged, went down to the two vaults beneath the choir gallery and the altar. He was admiring the Rublev icons when there was a cough at his shoulder. If he has been followed, I’m dead, he thought.
“Hello, Professor, how are you?” he said calmly, not taking his eyes off the glowing paintings.
“I am well, but nervous,” said Blinov.
“Aren’t we all?”
“I have something for you.”
“And I have something for you. A long letter from Zhenya. Another from little Ivan, with some drawings he did at school. By the way, he must have inherited your brains. His math teacher says he is way ahead of his class.”
Frightened though he was, with sweat beading his forehead, the scientist beamed with pleasure.
“Follow me slowly,” said Monk, “and keep looking at the icons.”
He moved away, but in a manner so as to be able to observe the entire vault. A group of French tourists left, and they were alone. He gave the pro
fessor the package of letters he had brought from America, and a second list of tasks prepared by the U.S. nuclear physicists. It went inside Blinov’s jacket pocket. What he had for Monk was much bulkier—a one-inch-thick sheaf of documents he had copied in Arzamas-16.
Monk did not like it, but there was nothing for it but to stuff the lot down his shirt and work the sheaf around to the back. He shook hands and smiled.
“Courage, Ivan Yevdokimovich, not long now. One more year.”
The two men parted, Blinov to return to Gorki and thence back to his gilded cage, Monk to catch the return train to Moscow. He was back in bed, his consignment deposited with the U.S. Embassy, before the coach returned from Zagorsk. Everyone was very sympathetic and told him he had missed the treat of a lifetime.
On July 20, the group flew out of Moscow for New York over the Pole. That same night another jet flew into Kennedy Airport but this one came from Rome. It bore Aldrich Ames, returning after three years in Italy to resume spying for the KGB in Langley. He was already richer by two million dollars.
Before leaving Rome he had memorized and burned a nine-page letter from Moscow. Primary among its list of assignments was to discover any more agents being run by the CIA inside the USSR, with an emphasis on any KGB, GRU, senior civil servants, or scientists. There was a postscript. Concentrate on the man we know as Jason Monk.
CHAPTER 9
AUGUST IS NOT A GOOD MONTH FOR THE GENTLEMEN’S clubs of St. James’s, Piccadilly, and Pall Mall. It is the month of vacations, when most of the staff wish to be away with their families and half the members are at their places in the country or abroad.
Many clubs close and those members who stay on in the capital for whatever reason find they have to make do with strange surroundings; a patchwork quilt of bilateral treaties enables members of the closed clubs to wine and dine at the few that remain open.
But by the last day of the month White’s was open again, and it was there that Sir Henry Coombs invited to lunch a man fifteen years his senior and one of his predecessors in the post of Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service.
At seventy-four Sir Nigel Irvine had been out of harness for fifteen years. The first ten of those he had spent as “something in the City,” meaning that like others before or since he had parlayed his- experience of the world, his knowledge of the corridors of power, and his natural astuteness into a series of directorships that had enabled him to put something by for his old age.