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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.
McCready began gently, flatteringly, and kept it up for the first hour. Orlov’s answers came fluently and easily. But after the first hour McCready became more and more perplexed, or so it seemed.
“It’s all very fine, wonderful stuff,” he said. “I just have this tiny problem—well, I’m sure we all do. Everything you have given us is code-names. We have Agent Wildfowl somewhere in the Foreign Office; Agent Kestrel, who may be a serving officer in the Navy or a civilian working for the Navy. My problem, you see, Colonel, is that nothing could actually lead to a detection or an arrest.”
“Mr. McCready, as I have explained many times, here and in America, my period in the Illegals Directorate was over four years ago, and I specialized in Central and South America. I did not have access to the files of agents in Western Europe, Britain, or America. These were heavily protected, as I am sure they are here.”
“Yes, of course, silly of me,” said McCready. “But I was thinking more of your time in Planning. As we understand it, that entails preparing cover stories, ‘legends’ for people about to be infiltrated or just recruited. Also, systems for making contact, passing information—paying off agents. It involves the banks they use, the sums paid, the periods payments are made, the running costs. All this you seem to have—forgotten.”
“My time in Planning was even before my time in Illegals Directorate,” retorted Orlov. “Eight years ago. Bank accounts are in eight-figure numbers, it is impossible to recall them all.”
There was an edge to his voice. He was getting annoyed. Roth had begun to frown.
“Or even one number,” mused McCready as if thinking aloud, “or even one bank.”
“Sam.” Roth leaned forward urgently. “What are you driving at?”
“I am simply trying to establish whether anything Colonel Orlov has given you or us over the past six weeks will really do massive and irreversible damage to Soviet interests.”
“What are you talking about?” It was Orlov, on his feet, plainly angry. “I have given hour after hour of details of Soviet military planning, deployments, weapons levels, readiness states, personalities. Details of the Afghan affair. Networks in Central and South America that have now been dismantled. Now you treat me like ... like a criminal.”
Roth was on his feet, too.
“Sam, could I have a word with you? Privately. Outside.”
He made for the door. Orlov sat down again and stared disconsolately at the floor. McCready rose and followed Roth. Daltry and Gaunt remained at their tables, fixated. The young CIA man by the tape machine turned it off. Roth did not stop walking until he had reached the open grassland outside the building. Then he turned to McCready.
“Sam, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
McCready shrugged. “I’m trying to establish Orlov’s bona fides,” he said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“Let’s get this absolutely straight,” said Roth tightly. “You are not, as in ‘not,’ here to establish Minstrel’s bona fides. That has already been done. By us. Over and over again. We are satisfied that he is genuine, doing his best to recall what he can. You are here, as a concession from the DCI, to share in Minstrel’s product. That’s all.”
McCready stared dreamily at the waving fields of young wheat beyond the perimeter fence.
“And what do you think that product is really worth, Joe?”
“A lot. Just what he said: Soviet military deployments, postings, weapons levels, plans—”
“Which can all be changed,” murmured Sam, “quite quickly and easily. Provided they know what he’s telling you.”
“And Afghanistan,” said Roth.
McCready was silent. He could not tell his CIA colleague what Keepsake had told him in the café twenty-four hours earlier, but he could hear in his mind’s ear the murmuring voice from beside him.
“Sam, this new man in Moscow, Gorbachev. You know little about him, as yet. But I know him. When he was here to visit Mrs. Thatcher, before he became General Secretary, when he was just a Politburo member, I handled his security arrangements. We talked. He is unusual, very open, very frank. This perestroika he talks about, this glasnost. You know what these will mean, my friend? In two years, by 1988, maybe 1989, all these military details won’t matter anymore. He is not going to attack across the Central German Plain. He is really going to try and restructure the whole Soviet economy and society. He will fail, of course, but he will try. He will pull out of Afghanistan, pull back from Europe. All that this Orlov is telling the Americans will be for the archives in two years. But the Big Lie, when it comes—that will be important. For a decade, my friend. Wait for the Big Lie. The rest is calculated minor sacrifice by the KGB. They play good chess, my former colleagues.”
“And the networks of agents in South America,” said Roth. “Dammit—Mexico, Chile, and Peru are delighted. They’ve rolled up scores of Soviet agents.”
“All locally recruited help,” said McCready. “Not an ethnic Russian among them. Tired, clapped-out networks, greedy agents, low-level informants. Disposable.”
Roth was staring at him hard.
“My God,” he breathed, “you think he’s phony, don’t you? You think he’s a double. Where did you get that, Sam? Do you have a source, an asset, that we don’t know about?”