what other nations, friends or potential foes, are doing and, if possible, what they intend to do. What they are doing is nowadays often observable; what they intend to do is not. Which is why all the space cameras in the world will never supplant a brilliant analyst working with material from inside another’s secret councils.
In the CIA the two men who hold sway under the Director of Central Intelligence, who may be a political appointee, are the Deputy Director (Operations), or DDO, and the Deputy Director (Intelligence), or DDI. It is Operations that inspires the thriller writers; Intelligence is back-room work, tedious, slow, methodical, and, paradoxically, often most valuable when most boring.
Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the DDO and the DDI have to work hand in hand and they have to trust each other. Benson, as a political appointee, was lucky. His DDO was Chip Allen, WASP and former football player; his DDI was Ben Kahn, Jewish chess master; they fitted together like a pair of gloves. In five minutes both were sitting with Benson and Irvine in the lounge area. Coffee was forgotten.
The British spymaster talked for almost an hour. He was uninterrupted. Then the three Americans read the Nightingale transcript and watched the tape recording in its polyethylene bag with something like hunger. When Irvine had finished, there was a short silence. Chip Allen broke it.
“Roll over, Penkovsky,” he said.
“You’ll want to check it all,” said Sir Nigel evenly. No one dissented. Friends are friends, but ... “It took us ten days, but we can’t fault it. The voiceprints check out, every one. We’ve already exchanged cables about the bustup in the Soviet Agriculture Ministry. And of course you have your Condor photographs. Oh, one last thing ...”
From his bag he produced a small polyethylene sack with a sprig of young wheat inside it.
“One of our chaps swiped this from a field outside Leningrad.”
“I’ll have our Agriculture Department check it out as well,” said Benson. “Anything else, Nigel?”
“Oh, not really,” said Sir Nigel. “Well, perhaps a couple of small points ...”
“Spit it out.”
Sir Nigel drew a breath.
“The Russian buildup in Afghanistan. We think they may be mounting a move toward Pakistan and India through the passes. That we regard as our patch. Now, if you could ask Condor to have a look ...”
“You’ve got it,” said Benson without hesitation.
“And then,” resumed Sir Nigel, “that Soviet defector you brought out of Geneva two weeks ago. He seems to know quite a bit about Soviet assets in our trade-union movement.”
“We sent you transcripts of that,” said Allen hastily.
“We’d like direct access,” said Sir Nigel.
Allen looked at Kahn. Kahn shrugged.
“Okay,” said Benson. “Can we have access to the Nightingale?”
“Sorry, no,” said Sir Nigel. “That’s different. The Nightingale’s too damn delicate, right out in the cold. I don’t want to disturb the fish just yet in case of a change of heart. You’ll get everything we get, as soon as we get it. But no moving in. I’m trying to speed up the delivery and volume, but it’s going to take time and a lot of care.”
“When’s your next delivery slated for?” asked Allen.
“A week from today. At least, that’s the meet. I hope there’ll be a handover.”
Sir Nigel Irvine spent the night at a CIA safe house in the Virginia countryside, and the next day “Mr. Barrett” flew back to London with the air chief marshal.
It was three days later that Azamat Krim sailed from Pier 49 in New York harbor aboard the elderly
His purchases were complete. One of his pieces of luggage was a standard aluminum shoulder case such as professional photographers use to protect their cameras and lenses. As such, it could not be X-rayed but would have to be hand-examined. The molded plastic sponge inside that held the cameras and lenses from banging against each other was glued to the bottom of the case, but ended two niches short of the real bottom. In the cavity were two handguns with ammunition clips.
Another piece of luggage, deep in the heart of a small trunk full of clothes, was an aluminum tube with a screw top, containing what looked like a long, cylindrical camera lens, some four inches in diameter. He calculated that if it were examined, it would pass in the eyes of all but the most suspicious of customs officers as the sort of lens that camera freaks use for very long range photography, and a collection of books of bird photographs and wildlife pictures lying next to the lens inside the trunk was designed to corroborate the explanation.
In fact, the lens was an image intensifier, also called a night-sight, of the kind that may be commercially bought without a permit in the United States but not in Britain.
It was boiling hot that Sunday, August 8, in Moscow, and those who could not get to the beaches crowded instead to the numerous swimming pools of the city, especially the new complex built for the 1980 Olympics. But the British Embassy staff, along with those of a dozen other legations, were at the beach on the Moscow River upstream from Uspenskoye Bridge. Adam Munro was among them.
He tried to appear as carefree as the others, but it was hard. He checked his watch too many times, and finally got dressed.
“Oh, Adam, you’re not going back already? There’s ages of daylight left,” one of the secretaries called to him.
He forced a rueful grin.
“Duty calls, or rather the plans for the Manchester Chamber of Commerce visit call,” he shouted back to her.
He walked through the woods to his car, dropped his bathing things, had a covert look to see if anyone was interested, and locked the car. There were too many men in sandals, slacks, and open shirts for one extra to be of notice, and he thanked his stars the KGB never seemed to take their jackets off. There was no one looking remotely like the Opposition within sight of him. He set off through the trees to the north.
Valentina was waiting for him, standing back in the shade of the trees. His stomach was tight, knotted, for all that he was pleased to see her. She was no expert at spotting a tail and might have been followed. If she had, his diplomatic cover would save him from worse than expulsion, but the repercussions would be enormous. Even that was not his worry; it was what they would do to her if she were ever caught. Whatever the motives, the term for what she was doing was high treason.
He took her in his arms and kissed her. She kissed him back and trembled in his arms.
“Are you frightened?” he asked her.
“A bit.” She nodded. “You listened to the tape recording?”
“Yes, I did. Before I handed it over. I suppose I should not have done, but I did.”
“Then you know about the famine that faces us. Adam, when I was a girl I saw the famine in this country just after the war. It was bad, but it was caused by the war, by Germans. We could take it. Our leaders were on our side, they would make things get better.”
“Perhaps they can sort things out this time,” said Munro lamely.
Valentina shook her head angrily.
“They’re not even trying,” she burst out. “I sit there listening to their voices, typing the transcripts. They are just bickering, trying to save their own skins.”
“And your uncle, Marshal Kerensky?” he asked gently.
“He’s as bad as the rest. When I married my husband, Uncle Nikolai was at the wedding. I thought he was so jolly, so kindly. Of course, that was his private life. Now I listen to him in his public life; he’s like all of them, ruthless and cynical. They just jockey for advantage over each other, for power, and to hell with the people. I suppose I should be one of them, but I can’t be. Not now, not anymore.”
Munro looked across the clearing at the pines but saw olive trees and heard a boy in uniform shouting. “You don’t own me!” Strange, he mused, how establishments with all their power sometimes went too far and lost control of their own servants through sheer excess. Not always, not often, but sometimes.
“I could get you out of here, Valentina,” he said. “It would mean my leaving the diplomatic corps, but it’s been done before. Sasha is young enough to grow up somewhere else.”
“No, Adam, no, it’s tempting but I can’t. Whatever the outcome, I am part of Russia, I have to stay. Perhaps,
