beyond tension, settling into a draining fatigue not just from the pressure but from the effort of staying ahead of that pressure.
‘You had a lot of difficulty at the end, about identifying KGB personnel?’
‘The same difficulty as always: the phrasing of the questions and the insistence upon simple answers,’ Levin fought back. The people I know at the United Nations are KGB personnel. Agents. Those I think I know outside are not personnel. I think they are suborned spies. I don’t know how it is in your service, but in Russia we differentiate between agents and spies.’
‘American, you mean!’
‘That’s what I think.’
‘Think!’ qualified Bowden.
He’s taken the bait, thought Levin. He said: ‘I do not have a name. Just scraps: bits of operational detail. It may be impossible to trace backwards.’
‘Operational detail!’ seized Bowden. ‘You mean you think there’s a spy in the FBI?’
‘No,’ said Levin.
‘Where then?’
‘The CIA.’
Bowden remained hunched over the polygraph material for a long time, his head actually moving as he went over the tracings and the queries and now these responses. He looked up at last with the familiar smile in place. ‘You know what I think, Yevgennie?’
‘What?’ asked Levin, the euphoria already beginning to move through him.
‘I think you’re too fucking honest for the stupid machine.’
‘You mean you believe me?’
‘Welcome to America,’ said Bowden.
‘Thank you,’ said Levin. It would be natural to let the relief show and he did.
‘There’s one thing,’ said Bowden.
‘What?’
‘You shouldn’t have lied about masturbation,’ smiled Bowden. ‘Everybody jerks off. Everybody lies about it, too.’
Sergei Kapalet was a classic KGB emplacement within a Soviet legation in a Western capital. Holding the rank of colonel within the service, he was described upon the French diplomatic list as a driver at the Soviet Embassy in Paris. It was a position low enough to be ignored by French counter-intelligence yet one that gave him the excuse and the facility to drive at will around the city. Which he had done constantly since his posting eighteen months earlier, preparing for this small but essential part in the most destructive operation ever devised by the KGB against the CIA. His job was to insert a few pieces into the whole of a very complicated jigsaw. For him to have known all the details would have put at risk the entire operation if he were detected as an intelligence operative, to avoid which was the purpose of the rehearsals. Kapalet drove and drove and drove again around the arrondissements of the city – amusing himself by going first around Le Kremlin area – until he was familiar with every avenue and boulevard. And during every journey he was alert for surveillance which would have warned him he was suspected by the French. It never happened. A superbly trained operative, Kapalet did not rely solely upon a car, but became an expert on the metro as well, journeying as far as Mairie des Lilas and Eglise de Pantin and Pont de Levallois Becon and memorizing all the transfer stations in between, again, all the time, trying to spot any pursuit. There wasn’t any here, either.
He initiated the approach to the Americans during the third month of his posting, while officially on duty as the driver he was supposed to be at a reception at the West German embassy. The Americans were initially extremely cautious, which professionally he admired, so it was not until a further three months that he was accepted and given a case officer. The man was a black New Yorker whose name Kapalet knew, from KGB files, to be Wilson Drew even before the CIA man introduced himself. The American was given to three-piece suits, French wine and jazz, which made for convenient rendezvous. Together – although not obviously – they went to the Slow Club and the Caveau de la Montagne and Le Petit Journal.
The legend had been carefully prepared and rehearsed in Moscow. Kapalet’s motivation was supposed to be entirely financial, to support a decadent Western lifestyle to which he had become addicted, and so as well as jazz clubs they went to the Crazy Horse Saloon and the Moulin Rouge and the Lido and La Coupole and New Jimmy’s.
The information that Kapalet passed over was as carefully selected as everything else, guaranteed always to be absolutely accurate. And provably so. Over the months Kapalet disclosed Soviet finance to a peace movement protesting against US missile bases in Europe and denounced a minor official in the French foreign ministry who was being run by the Paris rezidentura after being shown photographs of himself, naked apart from his socks, with two teenage prostitutes in a brothel off the Boulevard Saint Germain. The brothel was financed by the KGB as well, specifically to obtain incriminating material for blackmail purposes and Kapalet revealed that, too. Every disclosure was authorized by Vladislav Belov, in Moscow, each sacrifice considered justified for the success of the ultimate plan.
The contact procedure for the two to meet was for Kapalet to insert a bicycle For Sale notice in the window display of a small tobacconists’ shop off the Rue Saint Giles, the venue having been decided between them at the previous encounter. That night it was to be at the Brasserie Flo, on the Cour des Petites Ecuries.
Kapalet was as cautious as ever, going by metro and arriving early but not entering the restaurant, instead positioning himself to see Drew arrive first to ensure the American was not being followed either, so risking discovery by association.
The CIA man had been equally careful in his choice of table, at the rear, near the unpopular noise of the kitchen entry and exit. It would provide a cover for their conversation.
Drew deferred to the Russian for the drinks. Kapalet ordered kir and a 1980 Hermitage la Chapelle and they both chose venison.
‘Hope the information is as good as the wine,’ said Drew. He was a big, heavily muscled man who had boxed heavyweight at college.
‘I am not sure what it is,’ said Kapalet. ‘There’s just been a transfer to the rezidentura here, from Washington.’ Like everything else, that was true. Kapalet knew that the Americans monitored movements and would already be aware of it. The man’s name was Shelenkov.
‘What about him?’
‘He drinks.’ That was also true and the Americans would know that, as well.
‘So what?’
‘He was boasting in the mess, three nights ago. Said he had your people by the balls. Those were his words: he likes to show off his Americanisms.’
Drew was eating slowly but concentrating upon the conversation, not the food. ‘Had us by the balls?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘What’s he mean by “us”? The Agency? Or America?’
‘I thought you’d want to know that. So I manoeuvred the conversation. It’s the Agency.’
Drew pushed his plate away, as if he were suddenly sickened. ‘Son of a bitch!’ he said.
‘Well, is the information as good as the wine?’ It was important always to try to drive up the price.
Drew ignored the question. ‘Who? I need a name.’
‘Come on!’ said Kapalet. ‘Do you imagine I was going to come straight out and ask him? Or that he would have told me, if I had?’
‘Listen, Sergei. Listen good. You get this for me – get anything and everything you can for me – and you can name your own price. We’ll keep you in Roederer Cristal for life. You understand me?’
‘I understand,’ said the Russian.
An hour later the first alert reached Langley that they had a spy within the CIA headquarters. Such information is automatically classified red priority, so the Director was awakened at his Georgetown home.
‘Son of a bitch!’ he said, unwittingly echoing his agent.
‘What’s the matter?’ said his drowsy wife.
‘For fuck’s sake, shut up!’ said the distressed man.
