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

in Afghanistan. Far from having the situation cleared up in a few months, the Soviets, by 1985, had become bogged down in Afghanistan. Their casualties were mounting, and now there seemed no end in sight for their 120,000-strong army. What had begun as a short-term operation in 1979 had exploded in their faces. They were paying for their adventure on a grand scale, not in small part because of Bill Casey’s CIA. It seemed it was the Soviet Union’s turn to be on the run. I was settling in at Langley to be part of what Bill Casey thought was the endgame.

I eased back in my recliner and examined my desk. It had three stacked wooden document trays, all empty, a large cut-glass ashtray, and a gallon-size, clear plastic container with the word BURN emblazoned in bold red on either side. When I slid open the top drawer, I found two pencils, both freshly sharpened, two government-issue ballpoint pens, and a dozen paper clips. There was nothing else, at least at first glance. But as I pulled out the drawer a little farther, I saw what must have been my predecessor’s tools for coping with the job of being Burton Gerber’s deputy: three empty Excedrin bottles and a bulbous rubber thimble that slips over the thumb, enabling a conscientious reader to flip quickly through large stacks of documents. Examining the rubber thumb closely, I noted that it was worn and blackened by ink. Some job, I thought as I tossed the Excedrin bottles in the trash can and put the rubber thumb back in the drawer.

“The last guy almost wore that out,” said a voice from the open door. I looked up to see a man of medium height with a slight paunch and brown hair just beginning to gray at the temples. His complexion was flushed and offset by deep blue eyes that betrayed little of what was going on behind them. He was coatless, the sleeves of his shirt rolled above his elbows, and he wore a neatly tied bow tie.

“Paul Redmond,” the man said, confirming the earlier suggestion of a Boston accent. “I run USSR operations.

“I meant it about the rubber thumb,” he added. “You’ll wear it out working your way through all the cable traffic here each morning.”

“Everybody reads everything?” I asked.

“Everybody reads everything he reads, if they can get their hands on it.” Redmond gestured to Gerber’s corner office just beyond the adjoining wall. “And he starts an hour earlier than the rest of us.”

I leaned back in my chair. “One of those, huh? Is there a test at the end of the day?”

“Yeah, but it’s multiple choice, so a cowboy from Africa Division can probably just pass it.” No smile yet—Redmond was still sizing me up. “Let me know if I can help you settle in.”

“How ’bout we start with you telling me what you’re doing in the USSR, say, in an hour?”

“Easy,” Redmond said, “our branch runs the division’s spies in Moscow.”

“How’s business?”

“Getting a little slack. Everybody’s getting rolled up. This whole place is falling apart. And not just Moscow. You heard the bureau just arrested a secretary in Africa Division for spying for the Ghanaians? For chrissakes, the Ghanaians can penetrate this place!”

Redmond was gone before I could respond or even make up my mind if I was going to like the guy or not. I thought I would.

   7   

Viborg, USSR, 1450 Hours, July 20, 1985

Oleg Gordievsky pressed his face into the underbrush as a military bus carrying female dependents from a nearby army base passed the spot where he was hiding a few dozen yards off the narrow road. He had spent the last two nightmarish days traveling by train, bus, and truck from Moscow to the rendezvous point his SIS handlers had chosen near the village of Viborg, not far from the Soviet-Finnish border. And at this moment the fear of being caught had been temporarily displaced by a relentless attack of mosquitoes infesting the marshy wood where he was awaiting his rescue.

Checking his watch for what must have been the hundredth time in less than forty minutes, he heard the whine of an engine. Looking up, he saw two cars pull to a halt just opposite his hiding place. Two men jumped out and looked around expectantly. Gordievsky’s spirits soared as he recognized one of the men as the officer from the SIS station who had confirmed to him in a brush contact in Moscow a week earlier that the exfiltration plan had been set in motion. Much later, Gordievsky would learn that the second man was Raymond Lord Asquith, grandson of Britain’s legendary Prime Minister and a promising Russian specialist in the British SIS.

In a matter of seconds, Gordievsky was curled up in the trunk of one of the cars, a thermal blanket pulled tightly around him, a mild sedative already beginning to work at his raw nerves. Beside him was a flask of cool water and an empty bottle in case he needed to urinate. There was nothing more for him to do now but wait calmly for success or failure. As his body began to surrender to the sedative, he heard the strains of pop music filtering from the car’s sound system into his hiding place. It was not his kind of music, Gordievsky thought, but it was his link to those who controlled his fate.

The Soviet-Finnish Border, 1530 Hours, July 20, 1985

Gordievsky had calmed considerably since he had taken his place in the trunk of the car. For the first time in three days he could no longer hear his own fear-driven heartbeat. Though the heat was stifling in the cramped quarters, he was thankful that the mosquitoes had been left behind in the marsh. Counting off each stop the car made at the Soviet border checkpoints, he controlled his breathing and hoped that the thermal blanket would effectively conceal his body heat from prying KGB sensors. As the car pulled to