Bearpit (15 page)

‘But of course I will!' said Levin, as if he found the query surprising. ‘I'll never stop being a Russian. Thinking like a Russian. Feeling like a Russian. I might have become disillusioned with it and what I was being called upon to do but there's always going to be a part of me uncertain if I made the right decision by coming across. And it's a regret that is going to be a very positive attitude until I get Natalia here, with us.'

‘Disillusioned?' picked up Bowden. ‘You say you've come across because you're disillusioned but you said on the polygraph that you've done it for money.'

‘And then I made it clear that was not the primary cause,' came back Levin confidently. ‘I had to answer yes – the honest answer – because that was the order in which the question was asked.'

Bowden sat nodding but Levin was unsure whether the gesture was in acceptance of the reply. The American said: ‘There were some responses to questions about truth and honesty that just worry the hell out of me.'

‘Let's get the sequence right,' insisted Levin. ‘It was honesty first, then truth. I replied no when I was asked if I considered myself an honest man because it was the right reply. How can I consider myself honest when I have betrayed my country? Which is what I have done and will always carry, as a burden. But I do intend to cooperate honestly if there is a proper debriefing. And I was accurate when I replied to the question about truth. We are
trained
not to tell the truth, you and I: to lie, if the occasion or the need arises. But again I intend to tell the truth if we debrief.' Levin wondered if the perspiration would be visible against the back of his jacket, when he stood: trying to reduce the risk, he leaned forward slightly, to enable air to get between himself and the back of the chair.

‘Why did you find the polygraph difficult?' Bowden snapped the question out sharply.

Remembering that the room was doubtless wired and that there would be a recording of his conversation with the technician, Levin said: ‘Before the test began, the operator asked me if I were familiar with the polygraph. I wasn't and said so. I did not like being strapped in as I was and I did not like the restriction of yes or no answers. It's too easy to convey a misleading impression by giving an absolutely accurate answer to a wrongly phrased question.'

Bowden's head was moving again but Levin was still unsure whether or not it was in acceptance of what he was saying. The American said: ‘Why won't you cooperate with the counter-intelligence services of other countries?'

‘I'm not setting myself up as a performing monkey,' said Levin at once. ‘When I told Proctor I was being recalled he immediately suggested I
should
return to Moscow and act there for the CIA. Quite apart from the fact that it would not have been possible – because I believed I was being taken back for investigation – I refused. It would have meant switching to a different agency, spreading my identity: just like cooperating with other counter-intelligence would risk my being further exposed …' He hesitated. ‘Russia – and the KGB – never forgive anyone who defects: you know that! There's always an attempt at retribution, as an example to others.' The ache now was 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.

13

Vladislav Belov finally decided it was time to shift allegiance. Not openly of course. Rather to begin to move away from someone certainly in personal decline and arguably in mental decline, as well. Someone, therefore, through whom there was the risk of being carried down in the whirlpool he'd thought about before. Maybe the suck of dirty water going down a plughole was a better analogy. More had become common knowledge now, carefully distributed by the GRU, for Belov to know that Kazin's failure to respond quickly enough to the Afghanistan insanity had risked an unthinkable disaster. Just as the maniac had endangered years of careful planning by signalling Levin prematurely, while his child was still in Moscow. That had actually been the greatest insanity, knowingly creating a situation in which Levin might not have gone at all. So maniac was certainly the right word. And maniacs had to be avoided if they weren't removed altogether: it was unfortunate the inquiry had merely censured the man, rather than getting rid of him completely. Definitely the time to move away. And now, luckily, the opportunity had presented itself. He knew he'd have to be careful, as careful as he had been in formulating the proposal that was going to disrupt the CIA with festering suspicion, as British intelligence had been disrupted by the festering suspicions left over from the time of Burgess and Maclean, Philby and Blunt. But he was sure he could do it.

Personally interviewing Yuri Malik, rather than deputing a subordinate, showed just how careful. There would be no indication of favouritism, because of who his father was, nor any preference instructions sent ahead to New York. That would be too heavy footed. At the beginning, protective association in Dzerzhinsky Square began with nuance and suggestion. But Vasili Malik would recognize it, when his son reported back that he had been briefed by the division head himself. And Belov was confident that the very fact of his being head of the division to which Malik's son was going to be attached would automatically result in more contact between the joint Chief Deputy and himself. Having initiated the approach by conducting this meeting, the pace had in future to be dictated by Malik, a reciprocal invitation for him to respond. Which he would. But very carefully, very slowly, very safely. Belov had moved too quickly, far too quickly, coming out as a Kazin supporter in the past. He had no intention of making the same mistake twice.

‘There is no way we can determine the supposed function that will be assigned you at the United Nations,' began Belov. ‘That is the decision of the secretariat of the Secretary General. We have people in that secretariat, of course. So I will exert as much pressure as possible to ensure a position giving you the greatest opportunity to fulfil your proper role.'

‘I understand, Comrade Director,' said Yuri.

Belov liked the other man. And decided he would have done so without the family connection. Certainly the appearance and demeanour were perfect for a New York posting. There was not a vestige of any Slavic colouring, no dumplings-and-black-bread heaviness. He was clear-eyed and clear-skinned and the fair hair was perfectly cropped to suggest the recent change from the sort of crew cut that seemed inevitable in American college graduation pictures. The man would be able to move around America, under the cover about to be explained to him, and never once appear different from anyone else beside him on the train or plane or street. The attitude was right, too: respectful but not cowed. Confident, like Americans were at his age. Belov said: ‘There's been a defection from our United Nations
rezidentura.'