The Deceiver

beriozka shop. Two KGB agents entered the shop and loitered among the shelves to see if the Englishman would deposit a message among the exclusive goods on offer there or pick one up. Had he made a purchase, he would have been arrested, as per orders, on the grounds that his purchase probably contained a message and that the shop was being used as a dead-letter box. But he made no purchases and was left alone.

On leaving the shop, he drove back to the British Embassy. Ten minutes later, he left again, now seated in the back of a Jaguar being driven by an embassy chauffeur. As the Jaguar left the city heading for the airport, the leader of the watcher team was patched straight through to General Kirpichenko.

“He is approaching the concourse now, Comrade Gen­eral.”

“He has made no contact of any kind? Any kind at all?”

“No, Comrade General. Apart from the old lady and the ice cream seller—now both in custody—he has spoken to no one, nor has anyone spoken to him. His discarded newspaper and sandwich wrappers are in our possession. Otherwise, he has touched nothing.”

“It’s a mission-abort,” thought Kirpichenko. “He’ll be back. And we’ll be waiting.”

He knew that McCready, under the guise of a British Foreign Office technician, was carrying a diplomatic passport.

“Let him go,” he said. “Watch for a brush-pass inside the airport concourse. If there is none, see him through the departure lounge and into the aircraft.”

Later, the general would examine his team’s telephoto pictures of McCready in the Montego and at the park, call for a large microscope, look again, straighten up with a face pink with anger, and shout: “You stupid pricks, that’s not Mc­Cready.”

At ten past eight on the morning of the same day, a Jaguar driven by Barry Martins, the SIS Station Head in Moscow, left the embassy and drove sedately toward the old district of the Arbat where the streets are narrow and flanked by the elegant houses of long-gone prosperous merchants. A single Moskvitch took up the tail, but this was purely routine. The British referred to these KGB agents who followed them all over Moscow in one of life’s more boring chores as “the second eleven.” The Jaguar drove aimlessly around the Ar­bat. The man at the wheel occasionally pulled into the curb to consult a city map.

At twenty past eight a Mercedes sedan left the embassy. At the wheel, in a blue jacket and peaked cap, was an embassy chauffeur. No one looked in the rear, so no one saw another figure crouched low down near the floor and covered with a blanket. Another Moskvitch fell in behind.

Entering the Arbat district, the Mercedes passed the parked Jaguar. At this point Martins, still consulting his city map, made up his mind and swerved out from the curb, taking space between the Mercedes and the following Moskvitch. The convoy now constituted a Mercedes, a Jaguar, and two Moskvitches, all in line astern.

The Mercedes entered a narrow one-way street, followed by the Jaguar, which then developed engine trouble, coughed, spluttered, lurched, and came to a halt. The two Moskvitches piled up behind it, spilling out KGB agents. Martins flicked the hood release, climbed out, and raised the hood. He was at once surrounded by protesting men in leather jackets.

The Mercedes disappeared down the street and turned the corner. Amused Muscovites gathered on the narrow pave­ments to hear the Jaguar driver saying to the KGB team leader, “Now, look here, my good man. If you think you can make the bugger work, you go right ahead.”

Nothing entertains a Muscovite as much as the sight of the chekisti making a mess of things. One of the KGB men re-entered his car and got on the radio.

Clearing the Arbat, David Thornton, at the wheel of the Mercedes, took his guidance from Sam McCready, who emerged from his blanket and gave directions, without any disguise at all and looking precisely like himself.

Twenty minutes later, on a lonely road screened by trees in the middle of Gorki Park, the Mercedes halted. At the rear, McCready ripped off the CD plate, which was secured by a quick-release snaplock, and stuck a new license plate, pre­pared with strong adhesive on one side, over the British plate. Thornton did the same at the front. McCready retrieved Thornton’s makeup box from the trunk and climbed into the rear seat. Thornton swapped his hard blue peaked cap for a more Russian black leather cap and got back behind the wheel.

At eighteen minutes past nine, Colonel Nikolai Gorodov left his apartment in Shabolovsky Street on foot and began to walk toward Dzerdzinsky Square and the headquarters of the KGB. He looked haggard and pale; the reason soon appeared behind him. Two men emerged from a doorway and without a pretense of subtlety took station behind him.

He had gone two hundred yards when a black Mercedes drew to the curb beside him and kept pace. He heard the hiss of an electric window coming down, and a voice said in English, “Good morning, Colonel. Going my way?”

Gorodov stopped and stared. Framed in the window, shielded by the rear curtains from the two KGB men up the street, was Sam McCready. Gorodov was stunned, but not triumphant.

“That,” thought McCready, “is the look I wanted to see.”

Gorodov recovered and said loudly enough for the KGB ferrets to hear, “Thank you, Comrade. How kind.”

Then he entered the car, which sped away. The two KGB men paused for three seconds—and lost. The reason they paused was because the license plates of the Mercedes bore the letters MOC and then two figures.

The extremely exclusive MOC plates belong only to the members of the Central Committee, and it is a bold KGB footsoldier who dares stop or harass a Central Committee man. But they took the number and frantically used their hand communicators to tell the head office.

Martins had chosen well. The particular registration plates on that Mercedes belonged to a Politburo candidate member who happened to be in the Far East, somewhere near Khaba­rovsk. It took four hours to find him and learn that he had a Chaika, not a Mercedes, and that it was safely garaged in Moscow. By then it was too late; the Mercedes was back in its British Embassy livery, the Union Jack jauntily fluttering from its pennant- staff.

Gorodov leaned back in the seat, his bridges now com­pletely burned behind him.

“If you are a long-term Soviet mole, I am dead,” remarked McCready.

Gorodov considered this. “And if you are a long-term Soviet mole,” he replied, “then I am dead.”

“Why did you return?” asked McCready.

“As it turned out, a mistake,” said Gorodov. “I had promised you something, and I found I could not discover it in London. When I give my word, I like to keep it. Then Moscow summoned me back for urgent consultations. To disobey would have meant coming over to the West immedi­ately. No excuse would have been accepted for my not returning. I thought I could come for one week, find out what I needed, and be allowed to return to London. Only when I got here did I learn that it was too late. I was under deep suspicion, my apartment and office bugged, followed every­where, forbidden to go out to Yazenevo, confined to meaningless work in Moscow Center. By the way, I have something for you.”

He opened his attachй case and passed McCready a slim file. There were five sheets in the file, each with a photograph and a name. The first picture had beneath it Donald Maclean, and the second Guy Burgess. Both moles were by then dead and buried in their adopted Moscow. The third sheet showed the familiar face and name of Kim Philby, who was then still alive in Moscow. The fourth had the thin, ascetic features and the name of Anthony Blunt, who was then disgraced in England. McCready turned to the fifth page.

The photo was very old. It showed a thin young man with wild wavy hair and large, owlish glasses. Beneath the photo were two words. John Cairncross. McCready leaned back and sighed.

“Bloody hell, him all along.”

He knew the name. Cairncross had been a senior civil servant during and after the war, senior despite his youth. He had served in a variety of capacities—private secretary to War Cabinet Minister Lord Hankey; in signals intelligence at Bletchly Park, in the Treasury and the War Office. He had had access to nuclear secrets in the late forties. In the early fifties he had come under suspicion, conceded nothing, and been eased out. Nothing could be proved, so he was allowed to move on to the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. By 1986, he was in