The Main Enemy by Milton Bearden (epub e reader txt) 📕

or so. Over the next two days they were tried, and on Christmas they were executed.”

Judge Webster perked up and, with a reflective expression on his face, said, “What does that tell us about the appeals process in Romania, Milt?”

I had gotten to know Webster from his visits to Pakistan and had witnessed his dry humor in action before. I didn’t break a smile when I answered.

“I think that would be a good subject for the Directorate of Intelligence to check into, Judge Webster,” I said. “And while they’re at it, they might look into the reports that Ceausescu had a hundred bullets in him after his execution. What does that tell us about Romanian firing squads?” For good measure, I threw in the final bizarre tidbit we had gleaned about the last hours of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. “We’ve also heard reliably from London that Her Majesty’s government was able to withdraw Nicolae’s honorary knighthood, bestowed years ago for his staunch opposition to Moscow, a few hours before he stood before his firing squad. I’m sure there was great relief in Buckingham Palace.”

Webster smiled and asked the real question that had been on his mind for the last several weeks. “What are you doing in Eastern Europe?”

“We’re focusing on East Germany right now,” I said. “That’s where the opportunities are. I expect to see some results pretty soon, but to be completely frank, I’m not sure there’s much we ought to do in the northern tier—in Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest.”

“Why’s that?” Webster asked, furrowing his brow. The DCI had been deeply interested in the region since he’d visited Europe a few weeks earlier and had called the collapse of the Wall ahead of most in the President’s cabinet. Now he was following events in close to real time.

“Aggressive collection could backfire. I think we should plan to move in quickly with the new governments and see what we can do to shore them up and keep them on track.” I’d been keeping a close eye on events in Prague and Warsaw and had come to the conclusion that stealing secrets might not make as much sense as linking up with the new intelligence services and helping them work with their new governments.

“What about East Germany?” Webster asked.

“We go after them hammer and tongs,” I said, “whenever and wherever we can. They have nowhere to go. As the process moves along, we’ll be all over them.”

“You got a timetable for all this?”

“We’re working the East German problem pretty hard now. And in the northern tier we’re putting out our probes.”

“Just keep me posted, Milt,” Webster said. “There’s a lot of interest in this downtown, I’m sure you know that.”

“I do, Judge Webster. I’m on the phone with them most days.”

The Kremlin, December 27, 1989

Val Aksilenko had seen events since the breach of the Berlin Wall through eyes sometimes blurred by tears of joy. A year earlier, the troubled KGB colonel had arranged to have himself seconded from Yasenevo to the office of the State Foreign Economic Committee in the Council of Ministers. It was his way of moving away from the KGB, one step at a time. The new post was pretty much a nothing job—his office was actually outside the Kremlin Wall—but it got him off the firing line.

Few of his colleagues in the Council of Ministers, and even fewer at Yasenevo, appreciated the fact that socialism had been dealt a death blow. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the most Stalinist state of them all, the DDR, had fallen, all pretty much peacefully. And now, in the Balkans, the ruthless Ceausescu had been toppled and killed. But those around him were too involved with their own increasingly desperate fates, Aksilenko thought, too preoccupied with what was happening inside Mother Russia, to become energized one way or another by events on the perimeter, or even to take much note of them.

The ideological and moral reevaluations under way inside every structure of the Soviet establishment were overwhelming; they were setting in motion nothing less than the collapse of the authority of the Communist Party and of the Soviet system. Better to look around for a soft landing, most of his colleagues thought, than to fret over what was happening in Berlin or Bucharest. And they had the best of it, the guys in the Kremlin and the KGB. For the poor slob in the streets of Moscow it was a different matter—the daily distress of scratching out a subsistence living was simply crushing.

Events were proceeding according to a grand scheme Aksilenko had decided was essential, despite the pain it caused around him. And that temporary pain Mother Russia felt was the source of his tears of joy. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the indispensable spark that had allowed change finally to come to the USSR. It had to happen this way, Aksilenko concluded; the world-shaking changes had to start in the satellites of Eastern Europe and roll inward, toward the center of socialism, toward Moscow itself. He knew that no change of any consequence would ever originate in Moscow. It had to come from the outside.

Aksilenko’s frequent visits to FCD headquarters to measure the mood of his KGB colleagues were always enlightening. The temper at Yasenevo was dark, with opinion divided between the so-called liberals, like himself, who welcomed the coming changes and the conservatives who were scrambling to hold them back. Yasenevo was splitting between the hopeful and the fearful. He was in no doubt that trouble was brewing for the men of the KGB. Sooner or later there would be a showdown. And that conclusion made him all the more grateful that he was away from Yasenevo, off in his snug cubbyhole in the Council of Ministers.

East Berlin, January 15, 1990

The atmosphere was festive, at least at first. Then it became tinged with the fury of revenge as Berliners tore into Stasi headquarters in the vast Normannenstrasse complex and began ripping the place apart, spraying secret