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

demanded that his code name be changed immediately. Soon, GTSPANIEL became GTMACRAME.

The MiG pilot’s pique over his cryptonym didn’t deter him from becoming a major league spy. His bitterness toward the Soviet system—and the hierarchy of the Soviet Air Force in particular—drove him on. He was soon photographing thousands of pages of Soviet Air Force documents, virtually everything of value in the classified library at his base.

He worked so fast that he complained that the CIA’s tiny cameras, built to look like Bic cigarette lighters, slowed him down. Rolph gave in and gave him the money to go to Leipzig and buy a 35 mm camera on his own. The pilot’s photographic production surged. Ingeniously, the Soviet made a big show of his fancy new camera and soon became the base’s unofficial photographer, taking photos of his fellow pilots—and even his commander—so they could send them back home to their families.

Langley, July 10, 1990

The tension had finally begun to subside. The PROLOGUE exfiltration had been launched.

Technical Services had created an elaborate American identity for Sasha Zhomov—a passport and travel history, along with the usual pocket litter, had been painstakingly assembled and sent off to Moscow. It would be dead dropped to Sasha Zhomov, and then it would be up to him to get out of the USSR using the identity of a West Coast professional traveling from Moscow to the Baltic states.

Zhomov’s American passport would show prior travel, entries, and exits from a variety of countries that backed up his new identity as an American on private travel. After the usual tours in Moscow and Leningrad, the traveler would proceed to the Baltics and eventually board a ferry in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, for the run to Helsinki. The package was dropped in Moscow, and the rest was up to Zhomov. I dispatched my team to Helsinki to wait for the ferry from Tallinn. There was no turning back. Now we’d have our answer.

Helsinki, July 12, 1990

The ferry from Tallinn docked on schedule in Helsinki, but there was no sign of PROLOGUE. The team waited another day. Then another. Still, it was no show. By day four I called them home. We asked Mike Cline and his wife, Jill, to book a compartment on the Red Arrow to Leningrad, to see if PROLOGUE might show up, and if he did, to get his explanation.

On the Red Arrow, July 14, 1990

Mike and Jill Cline had slept fitfully on the overnight run to Leningrad, but then they never slept well on these runs—never more than ten-minute catnaps. Mike was always concerned that he’d oversleep and miss the early morning brush pass with PROLOGUE.

At 0640 hours, Cline quietly left the sleeping compartment and made his way down the passageway of the rocking train to the smoking vestibule between cars. He lit up and waited. Each time he took a drag of his cigarette, he checked his watch. Ten, then fifteen minutes passed. No sign of him. Cline decided it was a no-show and returned to his compartment. He just shook his head to Jill, indicating that there had been no contact, and said nothing. Then Jill cheerily announced to Mike and the microphones that it was her turn to take a smoke and made her way to the smoking vestibule.

While she was standing there smoking her cigarette, she saw a young man she thought was PROLOGUE pass between cars and then go by again in the opposite direction. Odd, she thought, and decided to return to the compartment to tell Mike what she had seen. But in the passageway of the sleeper she got caught up in conversation with some American tourists traveling to Leningrad. She was still speaking to them when out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man she thought might be PROLOGUE enter the sleeping car from the rear of the train and walk briskly toward her along the passageway. As he passed behind her, while she was still talking to the American tourists, the man thrust an envelope into her hand and proceeded forward into the next car. Jill Cline turned her head to watch him as he disappeared into the next car. The tourists kept chatting, never noticing the brush pass that had taken place right under their noses.

Langley, July 14, 1990

“Fuck!” I exclaimed in exasperation as Redmond and I read our copies of Cline’s cable. The note PROLOGUE had passed to Jill Cline was written with a combination of exasperation and rage. He said that we had been dangerous and foolhardy in preparing the identity switch—for him to try to exit on that identity would have been suicide. Now, he declared, he would have to lie low for a while. He’d get back in touch when the time was right.

“We’ve got our answer, don’t we?” Redmond was matter-of-fact.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got our answer.”

“You win some, you lose some,” said Redmond. I could see his disappointment equaled mine.

Neither of us believed PROLOGUE’s plaintive cry. He was protesting too much. The KGB was good, but there had been no mistakes in the documentation package. The story just didn’t fly. And that meant PROLOGUE was controlled.

Cline also reported that he and Jill had taken a walk through Leningrad and had noticed that they were under particularly heavy surveillance, something a little out of the ordinary for their visits to Leningrad. They understood a few minutes later when they spotted PROLOGUE with the surveillance team. Nice trick, they thought.

“No guts, no glory,” I said without conviction, and picked up the phone to call the DDO before he called me. Neither Redmond nor I did a very good job of hiding our disappointment. I would admit later that the odds of the PROLOGUE operation were never better than trying to fill an inside straight, but that was what all but the most cautious poker players always tried to do. They got our passport and a pretty good plan that we wouldn’t be using