Comrade Charlie

just as a lot more would, in the future, whatever that future was for their organization.

Berenkov was a giant of a man, big in every way, booming-voiced and flamboyant-gestured. He was rarely affected by personal doubt, even during a period of imprisonment in Britain and thought that the current apprehension was unnecessary, supremely confident of his own ability to survive government policy changes. Which made Berenkov an unusual person. But then he was already unusual at his level within the KGB, someone with practical, gutchurning experience of what it was like to be an espionage officer in the field. From a London base he had operated clandestinely for more than ten years. Apart from rare snatched reunions under KGB guard in the hideaway places, he’d endured for all those years the separation from Valentina, the wife whom he adored. And still remained a getting-to-know stranger to Georgi, the son whose growing up from a child into a near-adult teenager he’d never known. Now Berenkov, a florid-faced man still heavy from the indulgence of being a Europe-wandering wine importer, which had been his London cover, enjoyed his equally indulgent and elitist existence in Moscow. He justifiably considered he had earned it all; the city centre apartment and the summer dacha in the Lenin Hills and the favoured Black Sea holidays and the Chaika limousine and the concessionary store facilities.

The door into Kalenin’s office was electronically secured and Berenkov turned from the window at the faint sound of it being disengaged. Kalenin, a bearded man who did not often smile, appeared more serious than usual: he wore his full uniform, which indicated the formality of the encounter from which he had returned. He unbuttoned the tunic as he crossed the room, slumping into the high-backed chair.

‘Well,’ he said, resigned. ‘We’ve been set our challenge by the new order!’

Berenkov walked closer, finding a chair of his own. ‘The Directorate? Or ourselves?’

‘It’s one and the same, isn’t it?’ said Kalenin, whose primary function was chief tactician of the KGB’s overseas activity.

‘So what is it?’

‘The Strategic Defense Initiative,’ announced Kalenin, shortly. ‘We will not only match but beat the American development.’

‘What!’ said Berenkov, temporarily off-balanced.

‘Those were the words,’ elaborated Kalenin wearily. ‘We are to identify the builders. We are to discover every detail of their technology and manufacture. Having obtained it we are to turn it over to our space technicians who will construct whatever the Americans are developing but in advance of that American development. And we will launch ahead of the Americans, proving yet again that the Soviet Union are leaders in space exploration.’

‘Have they any conception of what they’re asking?’ said Berenkov bitterly.

They’re not asking,’ corrected Kalenin. ‘They’re demanding.’

There was no other man whom Berenkov regarded as a closer or better ally than Kalenin. They had attended spy academy together and Kalenin had been the supporter at his wedding to Valentina and was Georgi’s guardian in the event of their deaths. Kalenin had played a considerable personal part in freeing him from imprisonment in Britain and protected him greatly on one particular occasion after his repatriation. ‘The order names me personally?’ he anticipated.

‘Yes,’ confirmed Kalenin reluctantly. ‘You can have whatever facilities you require: manpower, resources, money… anything.’

‘Luck,’ said Berenkov. ‘I’ll need a lot of luck.’

Which he got and was not unduly surprised at because Berenkov believed himself an inherently lucky man. But in the beginning a great deal was achieved through basic intelligence procedures.

The KGB maintains its biggest external espionage system in the world within the United States, despite the public displays of relaxation between Washington and Moscow. In Washington itself the rezidentura operates from the Russian embassy on 16th Street, less than a mile from the White House. But by far the greater concentration of intelligence officers work from the United Nations in New York: estimates vary but American counter-intelligence guess there are two hundred agents installed supposedly as international civil servants in the green-glassed skyscraper overlooking the East River. And as international civil servants they are not subject to the travel restrictions that apply to the Washington embassy or to the other spy centre, the Soviet consulate at 2790 Green Street, in Pacific Heights district of San Francisco.

Following the Dzerzhinsky Square meeting, Alexei Berenkov activated every one, ordering all other intelligence-gathering activity suspended and drafting ten officers immediately from New York to Washington. Aviation Weekly really is the foremost and best-informed aeronautical publication, and three of the New York operatives were deputed to read through the previous year’s magazines for all references to Star Wars technology. Others from New York focused upon every government department even remotely likely to be involved in such development. The overall government budgets and then its financial breakdown between those various departments – all public documents – were pored over in the Senate and House libraries in the search for an allocation to any company awarded space technology contracts. The Congressional libraries also provided the previous year’s record of every hearing of every committee of the two chambers involved in space exploration.

A chart was created from budget details and newspaper and magazine listings of all Pentagonapproved defence contractors, the logic being that bureaucracy moves on straight and well-regulated lines and that the development was likely to be awarded to a corporation which had already undergone a full security clearance and proved itself reliable in the past.

The dictionary-recorded word lobbying was invented in Washington, to describe favour-seekers who waylaid a nineteenth-century US President in the lobby of the Willard Hotel. Since that time lobbying has progressed into an accepted and recognized profession in the American capital, with the majority of national industries and companies paying substantial retainers to people specializing in their subjects to influence Congressmen and purchasing authorities into directing business their way. The KGB make full use of innocent lobbyists, retaining them through American-incorporated front companies to learn as much as possible about all scientific and technological advances that become known on Capitol Hill. Every Soviet-retained lobbyist in space or space component development was canvassed.

On the West Coast of America lobbyists are called consultants and their function varies slightly. They monitor and keep abreast of trends in that crucible of American high-tech concentrated in California’s Santa Clara County and known as Silicon Valley. Their utilization by the KGB is, however, exactly the same: unknowingly retained through Russian front companies but for convenience usually controlled through the consulate in San Francisco.

The information that Berenkov sought was built up fragmented and piecemeal. Several lobbyists and two consultants tried to earn a fee by regurgitating the Aviation Weekly article but two Washington-based specialists confirmed inquiries from other, genuine US aeronautical component manufacturers. From those earlier inquiries the lobbyists were able to provide the names of companies that had not tendered for the Star Wars work, narrowing the list of those who might have done. The possible identity was further narrowed by filleting from Congressional inquiry hearings the names of five corporations who had been barred from future government work for overcharging on some previously awarded contracts.

A breakthrough pointing to the West Coast came from a four-line reference to private-but-approved contractor use of existing shuttle landing facilities in the Mojave Desert in an Appropriations Committee report. There were three potential West Coast manufacturers remaining on the reducing list of possibilities. From Moscow Berenkov ordered that all three companies and their senior executives should be targeted.

The KGB head at the San Francisco consultate, Alexandr Petrin, took over the investigation of a company which a man named Emil Krogh was chairman.

Petrin, a darkly handsome native of Turkmenitya, which made it easy for him to pass as someone of Mediterranean birth, came to regard it as the best intelligence assignment of his KGB career.

Richard St John Harkness was a person elevated by a combination of convenient circumstance and personal good fortune to the fullest extreme of his abilities, although he would never have conceded it because the judgement had never occurred to him. The most recent example of that combination was the illness of Sir Alistair Wilson. The Director Generalship was being held open but Harkness believed that merely to be a temporary and cosmetic gesture, a reassurance to avoid causing the man any further, dangerous worry. And that his own promotion to ultimate control was inevitable. It was a role he craved desperately and was implacably determined to get. And when he did he intended restoring the department to one of proper order and respect. Sir Alistair and some Directors before him had been far too unconventional, tolerating riffraff and adventurers. It was all going to