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The Russian gave a long, slow sigh.
“Joe, did you ever wonder at the manner of my defection? The speed? Not giving you a chance to check with Washington?”
“Yes, I did. I asked you about it. Frankly, I was never completely satisfied with the explanations. Why did you defect that way?”
“Because I didn’t want to end like Volkov.”
Roth sat as if he had been punched in the belly. Everyone in the “business” knew of the disastrous Volkov case. In early September 1945, Konstantin Volkov, apparently Soviet Vice-Consul in Istanbul, Turkey, turned up at the British Consulate-General and told an astonished official that he was really the deputy head of the KGB in Turkey and wanted to defect. He offered to blow away 314 Soviet agents in Turkey and 250 in Britain. Most vital of all, he said, there were two British diplomats in the Foreign Office working for Russia and another man high in the British Secret Intelligence Service.
The news was sent to London while Volkov returned to his consulate. In London the matter was given to the head of the Russian Section. This agent took the necessary steps and flew out to Istanbul. The last that was seen of Volkov was a heavily bandaged figure being hustled aboard a Soviet transport plane bound for Moscow, where he died after hideous torture in the Lubyanka. The British Head of the Russian Section had arrived too late—not surprisingly, for he had informed Moscow from his London base. His name was Kim Philby, the very Soviet spy whom Volkov’s evidence would have exposed.
“What exactly are you saying to me, Peter?”
“I had to come over the way I came because I knew I could trust you. You were not high enough.”
“Not high enough for what?”
“Not high enough to be him.”
“I’m not following you, Peter,” said Roth, though he was.
The Russian spoke slowly and clearly, as if liberating himself from a long-held burden.
“For seventeen years the KGB has had a man inside the CIA. I believe that by now he has risen very high.”
Chapter 4
Joe Roth lay on his cot in his bedroom in the isolated building on Alconbury field and wondered what to do. A task that six weeks earlier had appeared fascinating and likely to advance his career by leaps and bounds had just turned into a nightmare.
For forty years, since its creation in 1948, the CIA had had one obsessive concern: to keep itself pure from the infiltration of a Soviet “mole.” To this end billions of dollars had been spent in counterintelligence precautions. All staff had been checked and checked again, given lie-detector tests, questioned, vetted, and vetted again.
And it had worked. While the British had been rocked in the early fifties by the treachery of Philby, Burgess, and Maclean, the Agency had remained pure. The Philby affair had rumbled on as the ousted British SIS man had eked out a living in Beirut until his final departure to Moscow in 1963, but the Agency had remained clean.
When France was shaken by the Georges Paques affair and Britain again by George Blake in the early sixties, the CIA stayed unpenetrated. Through all of that time, the counterintelligence arm of the Agency, the Office of Security, had been headed by a remarkable man, James Jesus Angleton, a lonely, secretive, and obsessive man who lived and breathed for one thing: to keep the Agency free from Soviet infiltration.
Finally, Angleton had fallen victim to his own innate suspicions. He began to believe that despite his efforts, there really was a mole loyal to Moscow inside the CIA. Despite all the tests and all the vetting, he became convinced that a traitor had somehow gotten in. His reasoning seemed to be, “If there isn’t a mole, there ought to be. So there must be; so there is.” The hunt for the suspected “Sasha” took up more and more time and effort.
The paranoid Russian defector Golytsin, who held the KGB responsible for everything bad on the planet, agreed.
This was music to Angleton’s ears. The hunt for Sasha was stepped up. Rumor began that his name started with K. Officers whose name started with K found their lives being pulled apart. One resigned in disgust; others were dismissed because they could not prove their innocence—a prudent move, perhaps, but not very good for morale, which slumped. For ten more years, from 1964 to 1974, the hunt went on. Finally, Director William Colby had had enough. He eased Angleton into retirement.
The Office of Security passed into other hands. Its duties to keep the Agency free of Soviet penetration continued, but at a lower and less aggressive tenor.
Ironically, the British, having gotten rid of their older-generation ideological traitors, suffered no more spy scandals from within their intelligence community. Then the pendulum seemed to swing. America, so free of traitors since the late forties, suddenly produced a rash of them—not ideologues, but wretches prepared to betray their country for money. Boyce, Lee, Harper, Walker, and finally Howard had been inside the CIA and betrayed American agents working in their native Russia. Denounced by Urchenko before his bizarre redefection, Howard had managed to slip away to Moscow before he could be arrested. The affairs of Howard’s treachery and Urchenko’s redefection, both the previous year, had left the Agency with a very red face.
But all this was as nothing compared with the potential effect of Orlov’s claim. If it was true, the manhunt alone could tear the Agency apart. If it was true, the damage assessment would take years—the realignment of thousands of agents, codes, foreign networks, and alliances would last for a decade and cost millions. The reputation of the Agency would be badly damaged for years to come.
The question that raged through Roth’s mind as he tossed the night away was, “Who the hell can I go to?”
Just before dawn, he made up his mind, rose, dressed, and packed a suitcase. Before leaving he looked in on Orlov, who was sound asleep, and said to Kroll, “Look after him for me. No one enters, no one leaves. That man has just be
come incredibly valuable.”
Kroll did not understand why, but he nodded. He was a man who followed orders and never questioned why.
Roth drove to London, avoided the embassy, went to his apartment, and took a passport in a name other than his own. He secured one of the last seats on a private British carrier to Boston and connected at Logan Airport into Washington National. Even with the five-hour time saving, it was dusk when he drove a rented car into Georgetown, parked, and walked down K Street to the far end, close to the campus of Georgetown University.
The house he sought was a fine building of red brick, distinguished from others near it only by extensive security systems that scanned the street and all approaches to it. He was intercepted as he crossed the road toward the portico, and he flashed his CIA pass. At the door he asked to see the man he had come for, was told he was at dinner, and asked that a message be passed. Minutes later, he was admitted and shown into a paneled library redolent of leather-bound books and a hint of cigar. He sat and waited. Then the door opened, and the Director of Central Intelligence entered.