Red traitor, p.29
Red Traitor, page 29
Serov’s voice was a tossed shovelful of gravel. Zimin silently handed his boss his sheaf of notes. As he read, Serov’s whole body seemed, to Sofia, to loosen in his immaculate uniform. When Serov’s eyes sought out hers again he seemed suddenly hostile, as though she were his enemy.
“Why did you not come to us immediately when Vasin first approached you?”
Zimin’s tone, for the past hour, had been full of encouragement as she had breathlessly spilled her story. Sofia looked in alarm from one man to the other, but found no succor from Zimin in the face of Serov’s abrupt anger.
“Sir, I…”
The relief that Sofia had felt as she had told her story—most of her story—to the understanding ear of Zimin suddenly twisted into a knot of alarm. How could she tell these men about her brother in Miami? A tangle of unsayable words jammed in her mouth. Only one phrase came out.
“I was scared, sir.”
Serov grunted contemptuously. But as he turned to his deputy, Sofia noticed that a muscle in Serov’s jaw trembled. As he addressed Zimin, his voice was quavering.
“You think what she says is true?”
Zimin nodded grimly. Serov puffed his cheeks and took a long moment to stare out the window, as though he were performing some complex calculation in his head—or seeking some inspiration in the darkening Moscow sky.
“Devil take that fucking man.”
Sofia lowered her eyes to the red carpet. It seemed that both men had momentarily forgotten her presence.
“Okay. Looks like we have no choice,” Serov continued. “I want them all rounded up. That damn film. Morozov, that fucking snake.”
Sofia closed her eyes and felt her world lurch into a maelstrom of rushing shapes. Morozov, the snake. Morozov, the traitor.
“And Vasin?” Zimin said the name as though it were sour on his lips.
“Vasin.” Serov’s face contorted into a grimace. “We know who he works for. Who’s behind this shitshow.” He paused and addressed Sofia. “Your man Vasin ever mention a General Orlov to you, Lieutenant?”
But Sofia did not answer. Slowly, as though she were about to perform a deep curtsy, she sank to her knees, then crumpled, unconscious, onto the carpet.
17
Malaya Bronnaya Street, Moscow
Sunday, 28 October 1962, 15:44 Moscow Time / 08:44 EDT
When Jacob finally found his way onto Malaya Bronnaya from the maze of backstreets and courtyards behind Herzen Street, he felt almost giddy with relief. He’d been weaving his way across half of Moscow, navigating by intuition, coming up against locked courtyards and dead ends. The crappy Soviet shoes he was wearing rubbed his feet and his cheap rabbit-skin hat was damp with sweat. At least he was sure—pretty sure—that he’d shaken off his tails with a neat dry-clean run through GUM, the cavernous department store on Red Square.
“Mayi net.” That told Jacob he had been the only Agency guy to have come out clean—otherwise Baker would have said “Net Mayi,” meaning he’d entrusted the job to someone else. Someone more experienced. Jacob was grateful for the gathering late-afternoon twilight. It was the spies’ hour before the streetlights went on, and he could relax a little about being spotted—“made” as a foreigner by a staring child or the vigilant eye of some babushka. He was about five minutes from the address, Jacob calculated, and quickened his pace toward Pioneers’ Ponds.
A line of shoppers spilled from the door of the butcher shop near the corner of Spirodonovsky Lane, so Jacob tried to cross the street to avoid them. But as he stepped from the sidewalk, a careering military Kamaz truck roared past him, followed by another. As they passed, Jacob noted they were all filled with armed soldiers. The trucks trundled in formation down the side of the Ponds and continued on to the Garden Ring. Jacob hurried on. Only two blocks to go.
18
Garden Ring, Moscow
Sunday, 28 October 1962, 15:44 Moscow Time / 08:44 EDT
Zimin sat in grim silence in the back of his sleek black staff car as it accelerated down the central lane of the Garden Ring, forcing crosstown traffic to a skidding halt. Roaring past the yellow and white bulk of the American Embassy on Novinsky Boulevard, they passed a convoy of three Army trucks bearing the marking of the Tambov Division, all full of young soldiers. They passed the boxy green buildings of the Tunisian Embassy, surrounded by a high wall and topped with radio masts. Zimin remembered that the mansion had once been the residence of Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, Stalin’s last and most ruthless secret police chief.
Beria. The last time that the Soviet Army had meddled in politics had been to remove the monster Beria before he could murder his way to power in the wake of Stalin’s death back in ’53. It had been Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet Union’s greatest wartime commander, who’d taken action. The story was a whispered legend in the corridors of the General Staff. Zhukov and his most trusted officers had smuggled automatic rifles into the Kremlin under their greatcoats. They surprised Beria in the middle of a Politburo meeting, slapped handcuffs on him, and bundled him down a back staircase. Kidnapped the chief of Soviet State Security, in short. Zhukov had posted soldiers from his personal bodyguard—trusted men who had fought under his command from Stalingrad to Berlin—around the Kremlin palace. They had orders to shoot any of Beria’s NKVD men who resisted. Luckily it hadn’t come to that. Nearly, but not quite. In a shootout in the corridors of the Kremlin, Zhukov’s tiny team would have been quickly outgunned by the secret police who controlled the place.
They’d gagged Beria, bundled him into a car, and covered him in a coat. With Zhukov himself in the front passenger seat, they’d driven out of the Kremlin right under the noses of Beria’s own NKVD guards. Drove him to the Tambov Division’s headquarters, twelve kilometers outside Moscow. For days they’d actually stood the division on combat alert in expectation of a physical attack by the NKVD’s troops. The only reason a shooting war—Soviet soldier versus Soviet secret policeman—hadn’t broken out was that Beria had left no deputy or challenger alive inside his own organization who could have organized a rescue.
Zhukov had pulled off a coup, pure and simple. Sure, he had the backing of most of the key members of the Politburo, Khrushchev among them. And only a man of Zhukov’s invincible reputation and energy could have done it.
Within a few days Beria had been quickly tried and shot. In time Khrushchev came to power, because the Army had put him there. And ever since Zhukov’s coup, the Army and the KGB had hated each other. No branch more so than the Army’s own secret intelligence service, the GRU.
And Serov? Serov had been, as always, on the right side of history. Khrushchev had made him KGB chief in Beria’s place—then soon after appointed him across the divide to head the GRU, precisely to tame and subdue the military’s spooks.
So what the fuck was Serov playing at now? Zimin was leading a company of Soviet soldiers into a military operation in central Moscow. Their only authority was Serov’s spoken order. And their mission? To recover a dead-letter drop that was the only evidence against a traitor to the Motherland. Colonel Oleg Morozov.
Why?
Was Serov protecting his friend Morozov out of loyalty? Fat chance. Zimin knew Serov for a ruthless and unsentimental son of a bitch. To save the GRU the embarrassment of having a traitor in its ranks uncovered by the KGB? Unlikely. Serov couldn’t care less about the GRU and its reputation—he was, after all, a lifelong KGB man. To cover his own backside after having unwisely tried to protect Morozov for too long? Now that felt closer to the truth.
Zimin had been sent to destroy evidence in a major espionage case in order that his boss could escape punishment for having befriended, then sheltered, a traitor. The next order, Zimin was sure, would be to arrange for Morozov to have a discreet accident. There were GRU labs that specialized in that kind of thing, Zimin knew. Heart attack pills. Seizure-inducing nasal sprays. Serov would want something discreet. Something, naturally, that wouldn’t reflect badly on the career of Ivan Serov.
Zimin’s car had pulled up on the corner of Malaya Bronnaya and Bolshaya Sadovaya Street. He peered out the window and saw the fresh horizontal chalk mark on the drainpipe of number 25, just as Sofia had described. Five Kamaz trucks were parked by the side of the road up ahead of him, the three subalterns in command standing in a huddle awaiting orders.
Zimin’s personal driver looked over his shoulder, expecting an instruction. The General ignored him. The evidence of Morozov’s treachery would be destroyed. Then Morozov himself. But what of the three other people who knew? Sofia. The nosy asshole Colonel Vasin. And…Zimin himself? Would they all soon also meet with nasty accidents? Zimin knew Serov well enough to imagine how he’d apportion the appropriate death sentences. Sofia—suicide by overdose, leaving a grief-stricken note about being unable to live without her dead lover, Morozov. Vasin, the automobile enthusiast? Crushed by a runaway ZiL truck full of concrete blocks. And General Zimin? Would Serov leave his loyal subordinate alive in gratitude for his discretion and silence? Promote him, perhaps, to the directorship of the Frunze Academy? Or command of an agreeable Soviet military district like the Caucasus?
Serov—grateful? Like hell. Serov would soon find a grave for Zimin, too.
Zimin reached for the door handle, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and summoned the two lieutenants and a captain with an imperious wave. Within a minute 112 soldiers were dismounting from the trucks, shouldering their Kalashnikovs and streaming into the courtyard of Bolshaya Sadovaya Street 25.
19
Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, Moscow
Sunday, 28 October 1962, 15:49 Moscow Time / 08:49 EDT
Jacob checked the rear entrance of the building that opened onto Yermolayevsky Lane. Clear. He crossed the road once more and approached the corner of the Garden Ring. The chalk mark was right there on the drainpipe closest to the street corner. Just ahead he could see a row of military trucks and a huddle of officers conferring. He turned on his heel to avoid attracting attention. Quickening his pace as discreetly as he dared, Jacob hurriedly retraced his steps and entered the archway that led into the back courtyard.
The place was dingy and deserted. A single bare bulb illuminated the doorway of entrance number 2—and indeed, as promised, the combination door lock was broken. Casting a final glance behind him, Jacob slipped inside and began mounting the stairs.
Second floor. Garbage can. Packet of Kazbek cigarettes. Jacob could see it, half-buried in the trash. Before pocketing it, he stopped once more to listen. The usual noises of a Soviet apartment building—discordant music from rival radios, raised voices calling children, a halting piano arpeggio. But then came another, much more alarming noise. The thunder of dozens of pairs of pigskin boots in the courtyard. Shouted orders. The slam as the entranceway door was flung open and a section of soldiers thundered up the concrete stairs.
Jacob had missed the Korean War. Moscow was his first foreign posting. Except for a few rib-cracking forays onto a high school football field, he’d never been in any kind of physical danger before. The imminent prospect of violence seemed too outlandish to fit into his brain. Jacob didn’t flee upstairs or dive into the elevator. He simply stood rooted to the spot, watching with fast-diminishing disbelief as a crowd of armed, green-uniformed figures appeared on the stairs. The leading soldier, an athletic young man with officer’s stars on his greatcoat, didn’t even seem surprised to see him. In a quick, unhesitating movement he crossed the stairwell and slammed Jacob backward, one hand to his throat and the other pinning his right hand to the wall.
“Sergeant! Get the Comrade General here, now!”
20
Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, Moscow
Sunday, 28 October 1962, 15:56 Moscow Time / 08:56 EDT
Zimin mounted the stairs two at a time, pushing past the soldiers who flattened themselves against the walls to allow him space. A single glance at the pale, skinny man who remained pinioned in the grip of a hulking young officer, openmouthed, confirmed Zimin’s worst fears. Despite his shabby Soviet clothes, the man looked wrong. He took a step closer. The suspect smelled foreign. Quite literally. An odor of alien shaving soap, exotic cologne.
An American intelligence officer caught in the act of collecting Morozov’s dead-letter drop.
Shit.
Zimin’s mind raced. He knew that he could be moments from a career-destroying disaster. What was a team of Soviet infantrymen doing apprehending an American citizen in downtown Moscow? If the man was a CIA spy, he’d most likely be a diplomat. The US Consul would show up. Followed by the KGB, of course, in force. They’d find whatever was in the drop. Question him about how he knew about it…A train wreck of truly epic proportions would unfold.
“Stand easy, Lieutenant. Release this citizen. Leave us. All of you.”
Zimin kept his eyes on the detained man, fixing him with a furious stare and raising a single finger into their shared line of sight. A silent admonition. Keep your mouth shut, foreigner. Just keep it shut.
They stood in silence as the young subaltern led his troops back downstairs.
“Chto proizkhodit?” What is going on? The first words out of the spy’s mouth told Zimin everything he needed to know. The foreign twang was immediately obvious.
“Molchat!” he answered. “Shut up.”
Warily keeping half an eye on the American, Zimin glanced into the trash. A packet of Kazbek, again as Sofia had described. He reached in and pulled out the fish oil–stained cardboard packet, rattled it, and rolled a tiny microfilm tube out onto his gloved palm.
Both Jacob and Zimin stared at it. The CIA man began to speak, but Zimin shushed him. So it was real. Zimin held the evidence of Morozov’s treachery in his hand. Serov had ordered that the dead-letter drop, and its contents, disappear. Immediately.
But what to do with the American? Jacob’s face was blank with incomprehension. Zimin scanned the agent’s weak, soft face with contempt, then turned on his heel and descended the now-empty stairwell.
21
Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, Moscow
Sunday, 28 October 1962, 15:59 Moscow Time / 08:59 EDT
By the time Zimin reached the courtyard, the soldiers were meekly filing out of the main archway and lining up to mount their trucks. The three officers hurried them on, evidently keen to get their men off the street. Zimin saw in their eyes that they were nervous, sensing something going on beyond their pay grade. The General called them aside and gave each of them a grave, confiding look.
“You’ve fulfilled your instructions precisely. I can confide in you that today’s operation concerned a matter of the gravest military security. None of you are to mention what occurred here to anyone.”
The three young subalterns nodded obediently. Zimin shook their hands, weighing each of them with his eyes. The young lieutenant who had grabbed the spy held the General’s hand a fraction longer than strictly appropriate. And was that a spark of complicity in the kid’s eye? Of familiarity? Nope. That one was not to be trusted.
“Your names, Comrades?”
A pity, thought Zimin as he walked back to his staff car. They seemed like good lads. But by next week they’d find themselves urgently posted to somewhere very, very distant. Spitzbergen. Norilsk. Chukokta. He hovered on the sidewalk, watching the Army trucks depart. General Zimin caught the eye of his personal driver, who was doubtless reporting on his movements to the boss. In his overcoat pocket, he fingered the tiny tube of metal.
Serov would be expecting a report in person. And the evidence in his hand, as soon as he knew that there was evidence. But at that moment only two people in the world knew what had really just happened on that staircase. Zimin himself. And the American spy.
The dilemma formed itself with diamond clarity in his mind. Give Serov the canister—and set in motion Serov’s clean-up operation that would in time doubtless consume him, too? Or…he could use the American spy and canister to throw Morozov to the wolves. And with him…Serov?
The thought was so electrifyingly dangerous that Zimin shuddered with the enormity of it. But as he turned tail and began to walk back to the building the clarity spread. It was him or Serov. And while there was no way he could take down Serov himself, he knew who could—and would.
The KGB could. Orlov could.
Zimin guessed that the American spy would take the back entrance, just as soon as he’d watched the soldiers departing the courtyard. Rounding the corner of Yermolayevsky Lane, the General broke into a trot. The young American’s unmistakable figure was hurrying down the street in the direction of the metro.
“Stoi!” Zimin shouted. Wait!
The kid hesitated for a moment, and seemed about to break into a sprint. But the sight of a muscular Soviet general officer jogging down the sidewalk toward him shocked the Yank into immobility. As soon as Zimin caught up with him, he grabbed the kid’s coat sleeve.
“Citizen. Wait.”
Jacob looked around in panic. At Langley they’d trained him to make as much noise as possible if any attempt was made to kidnap him in a public place. Scream, they’d told him. Shout “AMERIKANSKY DIPLOMAT!” at the top of your voice.
“Come with me, Citizen.” Zimin tugged Jacob by the sleeve, but the American refused to budge. Jacob began to croak some words of Russian, but Zimin spun him round and slammed him against the roof of a car. Twisting one arm behind Jacob’s back, he grabbed him firmly by the collar of his coat. It had been a while since Zimin had done this kind of thing, but the knack returned quickly. Hustling captured German officers into captivity, somewhere near Breslau back in ’44, maybe ’45. He kneed Jacob, hard, in the back of the leg to push him off balance and get him walking. As the American boy buckled, Zimin forced him forward, his head deeply bowed and his torso pressed up against the older man’s through the force of his twisted arm.
