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

“What else did he give us?”

“Some stuff on KGB penetrations of the Germans. Hasn’t checked out yet.” He added darkly that a KGB officer working for the CIA had to have a death wish. Especially these days.

Our conversation lingered in my mind after he left. Redmond had captured one of the cardinal truths of the spy business, that it took a special personality to commit high treason against the USSR. Trouble was, there weren’t many old Soviet agents in “retired” status to run a behavioral theory against. And the CIA’s meetings with agents were so brief and intense that there was almost never time to ask the Russian spies why they did it. Some never wanted to talk about it. Others expressed a hatred of the Soviet system, saying they wanted to damage it as much as possible. Those agents required special handling to ensure that they didn’t become overeager and wind up in prison. Some called it a kind of patriotism—for Russia instead of the Soviet Union.

A few defectors who’d jumped ship after a short stint emptying a safe here or there in a KGB Rezidentura were still around, living comfortably in America. But the members of that special breed who stood their ground, determined to make a difference by working against the system from the inside, were increasingly lying in unmarked graves. Penkovsky, Popov, Ogorodnik, and Filatov headed that list. And now new names were being added at a dizzying rate: Tolkachev, Polyshchuk, Smetanin, Martynov . . . and possibly Varennik. There should be a special section fenced off and set aside at Arlington Cemetery for all these men, I thought. Maybe then they could get the recognition they deserved.

Two days later, a follow-up report came in from Bonn. Varennik’s wife had been called from Moscow and told that her husband had slipped on ice and injured himself badly. She and the children would have to return to Moscow immediately.

Langley, December 1985

Clair George kicked off the special briefing in the Director’s large, birch-paneled office on the seventh floor. Edward Lee Howard had now been gone for ten weeks, and six weeks had passed since Yurchenko had made his dramatic exit. Outwardly, Casey seemed to have put the deep personal embarrassment of both events behind him. The investigations were still under way, and a couple of seniors sitting around the table would take hits, but they would survive.

“Bill, we have some unexplained losses in Moscow,” George said. “More than we ought to expect, even from Moscow operations.”

“How many?” The old white-haired DCI looked deceptively disinterested. He was taking in every word.

“Burton will give you the details.” George turned to Gerber, seated next to him at Casey’s conference table.

Gerber began to brief Casey. “Last May we had a sudden recall of an asset from Athens to Moscow,” Gerber said. “GTBLIZZARD, a GRU colonel. The agent was convinced the recall was contrived, a trap, and we decided to pull him out. He’s here now, but that’s not how it worked out for some others.”

Casey stared at Gerber without comment. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Juchniewicz glancing at the ceiling, willing Gerber to get on with it.

“Then in June we had the arrest of Paul Stombaugh and the loss of our aviation engineer, GTSPHERE. That was followed by the arrest, probably in August, of a Line KR officer we were handling in Lagos, GTWEIGH. He was in Moscow on home leave, and we believe he was arrested unloading a drop of rubles we put down for him.

“Then another GRU colonel was recalled from Lisbon unexpectedly in late August—GTMILLION. He hasn’t returned. On November 6, one of our assets in the KGB Rezidentura in Washington, GTGENTILE—the bureau calls him PIMENTA—went home unexpectedly on the same plane as Yurchenko. And he’s vanished. His family was recalled a week later with the story that he’d had an accident and they should join him immediately.”

Casey’s drooping eyelids flickered at the mention of Yurchenko, but he said nothing as Gerber continued.

“Then later last month an asset in Germany, a KGB lieutenant colonel, GTFITNESS—the source of the reporting on KGB plans to bomb American targets in West Germany—was suddenly called to East Berlin. He’s disappeared, and his family has been brought home. Again, they said he’d had a serious accident.”

“How many’s that?” Casey asked gruffly.

“Six.”

“Over how long?”

“Six or seven months,” Gerber said quickly.

“Jesus! How many you got left?”

Gerber paused for a second as he mentally ran through the remaining inventory of Soviet assets, then he tentatively answered, “We’ve got two active cases in Moscow. Two or three more outside. And some inactive cases on ice, maybe three of those.”

I ran the numbers mentally and tried to figure out whom Gerber had in mind. I came up with GTCOWL, the man who had provided the spy dust. Then there was GTEASTBOUND, a scientific source who worked at an institute far to the east of Moscow. The outside cases he was referring to probably included some scattered around Asia. The cases on ice must have included GRU General Polyakov and a few others who had been off the air for a year or more.

Casey scowled and looked around the table. “What are you doing about this?”

Clair George picked up from Gerber. “We’re looking at either a technical penetration or a human penetration.”

“Technical? You think they’re reading our mail?”

“Maybe,” George answered. “We’ll run some traps to see if it’s our commo. And we’ll run some more traps to see if they’ve technically penetrated our Moscow setup.”

“What about the human penetration? You think there’s a spy in here?”

“That’s the other possibility,” George said. “There’s only two, human or technical.”

“Whacha gonna do about that?” Casey grumbled.

“Run some tests to see if the people on the bigot list for these kinds of operations might be the problem,” George responded.

“How big’s the list?”

“Don’t know yet. We’re looking at it. Certainly all of us in this room, plus a lot more.”

Casey grinned. “You got me