Sur.
So what was the link that brought Dorsey to New York for the convention where Zooey Sonnenberg was going to be nominated for the office of vice president of the United States? Correction— might be nominated. I had never heard Dorsey mention Zooey. That might or might not mean anything, although Dorsey had a habit of dropping names left and right.
I stopped in the periodical room and scanned that morning’s papers. Jack Yocke had stirred up a hornet’s nest. Today there was more speculation by a variety of pundits, who claimed the White House was leaking Zooey’s name, running it up the flagpole to see what happened. A number of politicos would welcome the nomination, they said. On the other hand, a lot of politicians of both parties thunderously denounced the possibility of Zooey’s candidacy, accusing the president of wanting to start a political dynasty and attempting to evade the constitutional limit on two terms by setting his wife up to run for president at the end of his second term. One of the Internet companies had done an unscientific poll; seventy-seven percent of the respondents thought Zooey would make a good candidate.
It was raining when I came out of the library. I bought an umbrella from a street-corner vendor and walked ten blocks to a poolroom on the West Side, where I found Joe Billy and Willie Varner bent over a table. I took ten bucks off each of them before we hung up the sticks and went to find some dinner.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I was the chief archivist for the SVR, the successor to the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. With the help of the British, I defected and brought seven suitcases full of notes with me to the West. I was to be debriefed by British intelligence and the CIA when the killers came.” The Russian paused and took a ragged breath. “They killed my wife, Bronislava. I saw her dead.”
After Callie Grafton had translated for her husband, she waited for Goncharov to say more, but he did not.
Jake asked, “When did you first approach the British about defecting?”
“The second week of April. I had taken a train to Vilnius for a holiday. I walked into the British Embassy and asked to speak to an intelligence officer.”
“Wasn’t that a serious risk?”
“Yes.”
“And you had no trouble leaving Russia?” You know the bureaucratic mind. They do not watch those who are retired. Before my retirement from the SVR, traveling to the Baltic Republics would have been impossible.”
“How did the British bring you out?”
“It was very simple, really. My wife and I took another holiday to Vilnius, brought all the files with us. The afternoon of our arrival the British flew us to London.”
“Did you come straight to America from London?”
“No. We spent almost a week in Britain — just where I do not know — in intense discussions with intelligence officers. Then we came to America for a thorough, extensive debriefing.”
“Were there any Americans in England during your debriefing there?”
“Yes. At least two. One named Stephen and one named Bob.”
“Did the British copy your notes?”
“No. They wished to do so, but I refused to allow it. I thought that if I didn’t explain the notes, the files, innocent people might be injured by what was in them.”
“You didn’t think the files spoke for themselves?”
“Many did, yes. Many did not. You must understand the conditions under which I made my notes, snatching a few minutes here, a few there, scanning the actual files, trying to summarize what I had learned hours or days later when I had a few moments. The luxury of verbatim copying was not possible except in a few, rare instances when the fates gave me a quiet afternoon.”
“I notice that some of the files are typewritten.”
“After my retirement I finally had the time to attempt to organize my notes, to fill in details that in my original haste had been omitted — details that I still recalled — and to cross-reference them. But after so many years, with so much material, I feared the task would be unfinished at my death. And if my files remained in Russia, they would be destroyed soon after I died, as soon as the authorities learned of them.”
“Who, besides yourself, ever studied the actual files in the archives?”
“No one!” he said bluntly. “No one had the access I enjoyed. An intelligence agency is highly compartmentalized. True, the director of the agency could send for any file he chose, but directors came and went, and they had agendas. They had no time to sit and read. Only I did. The realization came upon me one day a few years after I was appointed archivist that only I was in a position to know the complete story, the awful, blood- soaked story of how the Communists ruled. Lenin, Stalin, Beria, Andropov, all of them. Only I could read every word, every jot and comma, of their crimes.
“That is why my notes are so precious. No person has ever studied the archives as I have. No one else knows as much as I do about the activities of the Soviet intelligence services.”
Goncharov searched the faces of his listeners. “Don’t you understand? The intelligence services kept the Communists in power. They were the right arm of the Communist state. They arrested, framed, betrayed, silenced, murdered, and discredited the state’s enemies, who were everyone who voiced the slightest doubt that the Communists were always right. They fought their enemies worldwide. My notes are the evidence against them. They must be studied and understood in the West. And they must be publicized, be made available to the Russian people, who must learn the truth.”
“Only one box of files remains,” Jake gently remarked. True, much has been lost. But the files that remain are the most precious. They detail the KGB’s operations against internal enemies.”
And you. You remain. You can write of what you know.” The pain in Goncharov’s face was difficult to look upon.
‘Without the files to refer to.. ” he whispered, his doubt palpable. Jake Grafton moved on. “Did any British intelligence officers accompany you to the American safe house?”
“To the best of my knowledge, no. An Englishman named Nigel came to the United States with me, but I didn’t see him after the first day. I was told that specialists were coming from London to study the files and question me, yet they had not arrived.”
When she had finished translating, Callie said to her husband, “You don’t really think the Russians attacked the safe house?”
“No,” he replied softly. “It happened too soon, and the people who did it were Americans. The safe house strike was an American operation all the way.” He studied his toes. “Goncharov’s defection was a huge intelligence coup. No doubt his extraction from Russia received minute-by-minute attention from the very top. The British must have been ecstatic. A peek into the inner workings of their archrival, a chance to purge the traitors in their midst, uncover sleepers, plug leaks, ahh…! This twist of fate was so wonderful they decided to share the good fortune with their allies, the Americans, who must have been equally ecstatic.
“And yet, somewhere on this side of the Atlantic, the news must have been the last thing on earth someone wanted to hear. The archivist for the KGB was coming with seven suitcases full of meticulously copied notes, the labor of his life, his monument to the venal criminality of the Communist system. Someone heard that news with morbid dread.”
“But wouldn’t Goncharov’s defection be a closely held secret?”
“Oh, yes. Extremely closely held. A half dozen people in the CIA perhaps, the director of the FBI, the president, the national security adviser, the president’s chief of staff, perhaps the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, three or four other highly placed, key people — you can make your own list. Yet someone in that circle felt mortal terror when he heard it.”
“Which one?”
“That is the question,” he said, and rose from his seat. “You need to question him, carefully, thoroughly,” he said to Callie,
