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

for a public telephone booth, Stombaugh concentrated on the elements of his operational outing.

He had carefully handled the letter for Father Roman, keeping it free of fingerprints or other contaminants that might lead the KGB back to the CIA. The letter’s text was the carefully crafted product of a lengthy debate at CIA headquarters and at Moscow, all of which had been triggered by Nicholas Daniloff’s visit to the U.S. embassy eight weeks earlier.

Daniloff’s decision in January to go the American embassy with his envelope had quickly caught the CIA’s attention. Inside the CIA’s secure enclosure on the fifth floor of the embassy building, station chief Murat Natirboff and CIA case officer Michael Sellers spread the pages of Daniloff’s letter across a table and began a rough initial translation.

At first, the densely written pages seemed to be filled with breathless rantings—there was a slightly crazed quality to them. But as they read on, the two CIA officers realized that the letter also contained some tantalizing information. Was this a message from a verbose—yet very real—volunteer? Hard to tell, but after Tolkachev, Moscow could no longer dismiss the possibility. Natirboff decided to send the letter on to Langley, thinking it might be the last they would hear of it.

But the response from headquarters was instantaneous and explosive. The handwriting, along with many of the themes touched on in the letter, had convinced Langley that it had been written by the same mysterious volunteer who had provided the tantalizing strategic material four years earlier. Natirboff was told that reestablishing clandestine contact with the author was now a top priority. He was authorized to meet with the man who had brought the letter to the embassy, Nicholas Daniloff. While the CIA was prohibited by presidential order from using American journalists in their intelligence operations, the agency just wanted to ask Daniloff a simple question: How can we find the person who gave you this letter?

In March, Natirboff asked Curt Kamman, the embassy’s deputy chief of mission, to invite Daniloff to the embassy. By then, Daniloff was busy covering the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, but he agreed to stop by. When he arrived, Kamman steered him to an acoustic conference room, the soundproof “bubble” in the embassy’s political section. Just as Daniloff was explaining to Kamman what he remembered about Father Roman and the letter, repeating what he had told Benson the first time he had come to the embassy, Natirboff joined them. Daniloff recognized him only as an obscure embassy counselor for regional affairs, but the reporter quickly surmised from his questions that the swarthy man with thick black hair combed straight back and a deeply lined face was CIA. Only later did he learn that Natirboff was the CIA’s Moscow station chief.

The conversation was unsettling for Daniloff. Natirboff focused on the letter he had received in January. It appeared, Natirboff explained, to be a letter from a dissident scientist trying to contact the CIA. Daniloff said he found that hard to believe. He was convinced Father Roman was working for the KGB, and he assumed that the letter had come from him. Natirboff asked the reporter to tell him everything he knew about the apparent courier, and Daniloff ended up giving him a physical description of the young Russian, along with his telephone number. The CIA turned Father Roman’s telephone number over to the National Security Agency, the secret code-breaking and eavesdropping arm of the U.S. intelligence community. The NSA matched a likely address in Moscow with the telephone number.

Stombaugh was sent out to try to track Father Roman down and, through him, to establish contact with the elusive scientist.

Stombaugh located a public telephone booth not far from the address Langley had provided for Father Roman. Convinced he was still surveillance free, he quickly slipped an induction loop over the telephone’s earpiece to record the conversation on his body-worn miniature cassette tape recorder. He dropped his kopek coins into the slot and dialed Father Roman’s telephone number. He dialed slowly, so that the rickety Moscow telephone switching system would route the call through on the first attempt.

A woman answered on the third ring. “Allo . . .”

“Is this the home of Roman Potemkin?” Stombaugh asked in practiced Russian.

“I am his mother. Roman is not here.” The woman’s tone of voice sounded natural and unrehearsed.

“Do you know when he might return?”

“In about an hour.”

“Thank you. I’ll call back then.”

Stombaugh gathered his thoughts. He had established that the telephone number was, in fact, that of Roman Potemkin, but he knew there was still plenty of danger. If Father Roman was a KGB provocateur, a real possibility, the telephone could be a KGB-controlled “answering service.” He’d have felt better if Father Roman himself had answered rather than a woman claiming to be his mother with the message that Potemkin would return in an hour. That could give the KGB time to get Father Roman to the phone, but again, only if the operation was under their control. The risks hadn’t really increased, Stombaugh thought. He decided to wait the hour and then make the second call. He set off on foot to keep moving while he searched for a second public telephone.

Just over an hour later, Stombaugh dialed Roman Potemkin’s number for a second time. A man picked up after the second ring.

“Allo.”

“Are you Father Roman?” Stombaugh said in accented Russian.

“Da . . .”

“I have information from our mutual friend, Nikolai. I have something for you. Can you confirm your address is as follows?” Stom-baugh read the address he had been given.

“No, that’s wrong.”

“Can you tell me your correct address? Please speak slowly.”

The man repeated the address, and Stombaugh wrote it down carefully, the wire loop leading from the earpiece to the recorder in his coat pocket serving as a backup.

“Thank you, I hope to be in touch soon.” Stombaugh put the phone back in the cradle and quickly replayed the recording of the conversation and confirmed the address. Checking the map, he calculated that