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He passed three separate lie-detector tests concerning his background, career, private life, and political change of heart. And he began to reveal information of the first order.
For one thing, his career had been very varied. From his four years with the Third or Armed Forces Directorate, working inside the Joint Planning Staff at Army headquarters while posing as GRU Major Kuchenko, he had a wide knowledge of the personalities of a range of senior military officers, of the dispositions of divisions of the Soviet Army and Air Force, and of the Navy’s ships at sea and in the yards.
He provided fascinating insights into the defeats suffered by the Red Army in Afghanistan, told of the unsuspected demoralization of the Soviet troops there and of Moscow’s growing disillusion with Afghan puppet dictator Babrak Kamal.
Prior to working in the Third Directorate, Orlov had been with the Illegals Directorate, that department inside the First Chief Directorate responsible for the running of “illegal” agents worldwide. The “illegals” are the most secret of all agents who spy against their own country (if they are nationals of it) or who live in the foreign country under deep cover. These are the agents who have no diplomatic cover, for whom exposure and capture does not entail the merely embarrassing penalty of being declared persona non grata and expelled, but the more painful therapy of arrest, harsh interrogation, and sometimes execution.
Although his knowledge was four years out of date, Orlov seemed to have an encyclopedic memory and began to blow away the very networks he had once helped establish and run, mainly in Central and South America, which had been his previous area.
When a defector arrives whose information turns out to be controversial, there usually appear among the officers of the host agency two camps: those who believe and support the new defector, and those who doubt and oppose him. In the history of the CIA the most notorious such case was that of Golytsin and Nosenko.
In 1960, Anatoli Golytsin defected and made it his business to warn the CIA that the KGB had been behind just about everything that had gone wrong in the world since the end of the Second World War. For Golytsin, there was no infamy to which the KGB would not stoop or was not even then preparing. This was music to the ears of a hardline faction in the CIA headed by counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, who had been warning his superiors of much the same thing for years. Golytsin became a much-prized star.
In November 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated, apparently by a left-winger, with a Russian wife, called Lee Harvey Oswald, who had once defected to the USSR and lived there for over a year. In January 1964, Yuri Nosenko defected. He declared he had been Oswald’s case officer in Russia and that the KGB had found Oswald to be a pain in the neck, had severed all contact with him, and had had nothing to do with the Kennedy slaying.
Golytsin, supported by Angleton, at once denounced his fellow Russian, who was interrogated extremely harshly but refused to change his story. The dispute tore the Agency into two camps for years and rumbled on for two decades. Depending on the outcome of the question of who was right and who was wrong, careers were made and broken, for it is axiomatic that the careers of those behind a major success will start to rise.
In the case of Pyotr Orlov, there was no such hostile action to be found, and the glory fell upon Calvin Bailey, the head of Special Projects, the office that had brought him in.
The day after Joe Roth began to share his life with Colonel Orlov in Virginia, Sam McCready quietly entered the portals of the British Museum, which was located in the heart of Bloomsbury, and headed for the great circular reading room under its domed cupola.
There were two younger men with him, Denis Gaunt, on whom McCready was putting an increasing degree of trust and reliance, and another man called Patten. Neither of the backup team would see the face of Keepsake—they did not need to, and it might have been dangerous. Their job was simply to idle near the entrances while perusing the laid-out newspapers and ensure that their desk head would not be disturbed by interlopers.
McCready made for a reading table largely enclosed by bookshelves and courteously asked the man already seated there if he minded the intrusion. The man, his head bowed over a volume from which he took occasional notes, silently gestured to the chair opposite and went on reading. McCready waited quietly. He had selected a volume he wished to read, and in a few moments one of the reading room staff brought it to him and as quietly left. The man across the table kept his head bowed.
When they were alone McCready spoke. “How are you, Nikolai?”
“Well,” murmured the man, making a note on his pad.
“There is news?”
“We are to receive a visit next week. At the Rezidentsia.”
“From Moscow Center?”
“Yes. General Drozdov himself.”
McCready made no sign. He kept reading his book, and his lips hardly moved. No one outside the enclave of book-lined shelves could have heard the low murmur, and no one would enter the enclave. Gaunt and Patten would see to that. But he was amazed by the name. Drozdov, a short chunky man who bore a startling resemblance to the late President Eisenhower, was the head of the Illegals Directorate and rarely ventured outside the USSR. To come into the lion’s den of London was most unusual and could be very important.
“Is that good or bad?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Keepsake. “It’s certainly odd. He is not my direct superior, but he could not come unless he had cleared it with Kryuchkov.”
(General Vladimir Kryuchkov, since 1988 Chairman of the KGB, was then Head of the First Chief Directorate, the foreign intelligence arm.)
“Will he discuss with you his illegals planted in Britain?”
“I doubt it. He likes to run his illegals direct. It may be something to do with Orlov. There has been the most almighty stink over that. The two other GRU officers in the delegation are under interrogation already. The best they will get is a court martial for negligence. Or maybe ...”
“Is there another reason for his coming?”
Keepsake sighed and raised his eyes for the first time. McCready stared back. He had become a friend o
f the Russian over the years, trusted him, believed in him.
“It’s just a feeling,” said Keepsake. “He may be checking out the Rezidentsia over here. Nothing concrete, just an odor on the wind. Maybe they suspect something.”
“Nikolai, it cannot go on forever. We know that. Sooner or later, the pieces will add together. Too many leaks, too many coincidences. Do you want to come out now? I can arrange it. Say the word.”