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

that he wanted to go shopping, so the two headed up Interstate 95 toward Washington and stopped at a mall in Manassas, Virginia. Yurchenko went into Hecht’s, where he’d been once before with his CIA handlers, and ducked into the dressing room to try on some clothes. Later, after his escape, CIA officers noticed that there was a pay phone by the dressing room. Was it possible, they wondered, that he had noticed the pay phone on his earlier shopping trip and maneuvered his security guard back to the store so he could place a call to the Soviets?

After the side trip to Hecht’s, Yurchenko told Hannah he wanted to try French food for dinner and suggested they drive into Georgetown. Hannah knew that Yurchenko and his escorts had been to Georgetown just two nights before, so he figured it was okay to go back again.

After ordering at the Georgetown restaurant Au Pied de Cochon, Yurchenko quietly made his move. He told the inexperienced Hannah that if he didn’t come back, it wasn’t his fault, and then he simply walked out the door. Inexplicably, Hannah sat and waited for a time before calling to notify anyone that the biggest defector in CIA history had walked out on him.

Hannah finally called Colin Thompson at his home, just as Thompson was on his way out the door to meet a date. Thompson told Hannah to call him back at his date’s home if Yurchenko didn’t come back in the next few minutes. By the time Thompson arrived at the woman’s home, Hannah called again in a panic, and Thompson finally agreed to come down to Georgetown to help look for the Russian. He was soon joined by others from the CIA and FBI, all of whom began to search through Georgetown’s streets. Thompson hoped at first that Yurchenko might have ducked in to see a Russian film playing at a nearby theater, and both the CIA and FBI kept up the search through the night.

As soon as he was notified of Yurchenko’s disappearance, Burton Gerber thought: He’s gone back. He knew that the street-by-street search in Georgetown would be fruitless, and he grew increasingly angry and frustrated by the sloppy way his officers had handled Yurchenko that night. He blew up during a rancorous telephone conversation with Thompson, who seemed far too casual and unapologetic about the whole affair. Yurchenko’s disappearance effectively ended Thompson’s career in the Soviet Division and any hope he had for advancement at the CIA. He spent his last years at the agency in the defector program, trying to prove that he could, in fact, work well with them.

Soviet Embassy, Washington, D.C., November 2, 1985

It was late when Viktor Cherkashin was summoned to the Soviet embassy. He met KGB Rezident Stanislov Androsov in the parking lot. Standing in the parking lot, where no one could hear their conversation, Androsov told Cherkashin that Yurchenko was back.

Cherkashin was stunned. He blurted out a few well-chosen Russian words to express his feelings about this increasingly bizarre situation. Then he went up to the apartment where Yurchenko was being kept under the watchful eye of a security guard. Cherkashin assumed his best stage presence to convince Yurchenko that he was happy to see him. He hugged him and welcomed him back into the fold.

Cherkashin didn’t believe Yurchenko’s story—that he had been drugged and kidnapped and forced to reveal secrets. But he and Androsov immediately saw the opportunity presented by Yurchenko’s change of heart.

Reston, Virginia, 0330 Hours, November 3, 1985

The first call came from Burton Gerber.

“Milton, when did you last see Yurchenko?”

I thought for a moment. “About a week ago. Maybe a little longer. It was when I told him about the Shadrin business. Why?”

“You haven’t heard?” Gerber was incredulous. “He walked away from his security officer last night in Georgetown. Didn’t anyone call you?”

“Not until you just called.”

“He’s redefected.”

My mind was racing, thinking back on my last meeting with Yurchenko.

“I’m not so sure. Maybe he’s just kicking back and telling us to ease off him.” I wasn’t convinced by my own argument, but I felt I had to throw something in the mix.

“He’s redefected.” Gerber paused and then added, “Get in touch with Colin.”

I had barely hung up the phone when the second call came in, this one from Ed Juchniewicz, the number two man in the Directorate of Operations.

“Did you fuck up the Yurchenko thing?”

“Ed, I’m not even convinced Yurchenko’s redefected.”

“What the fuck you think he did, run off to get laid?”

“Maybe something not far from that. He might have just decided he needed to write himself a three-day pass.”

Juchniewicz was silent for a moment. “Don’t try taking that to the bank. Your buddy’s gone.” Then the phone went dead.

The mystery of Yurchenko’s whereabouts was solved Monday afternoon. Beginning at around 3:00 P.M., the press officer at the Soviet embassy started alerting select members of the Washington press corps that there would be a press conference at 5:30 that afternoon, at which time they would be able to put some questions to Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko. The State Department didn’t find out what was going on until 4:00 P.M., when it received an official protest delivered by the Soviet embassy, complaining of the “criminal act committed against V. S. Yurchenko.”

At the press conference, Yurchenko, flanked by Minister Viktor Isakov, the interpreter Vitaly Churkin, and a third Soviet official, Vladimir Kulagin, sat at a green felt–covered table in the reception room of the Soviet embassy. The room was filled with American and foreign reporters, as well as a large number of Soviet embassy officials. Yurchenko, clearly breaking with what was supposed to have been a more scripted session, switched erratically from Russian to English, often leaving his interpreter in midsentence. But the story he told was one that fit neatly with the Soviet view of how America’s “special services” operated against Russian intelligence officers. He wove a tale of kidnapping and incarceration.

“I was forcibly abducted in Rome by some unknown persons.