The Soviet Comeback by Jamie Smith (best ereader for academics TXT) 📕

his passcode, entered the office and saw her standing over by the coffee machine, talking to a middle-aged woman with hair drawn tightly back who he knew to be a researcher named Julie.

He paused, and she glanced over at him. They made awkward eye contact before he looked quickly away and made his way over to his desk. He couldn’t afford distractions, and the words of Klitchkov echoed around his head. ‘At some point every asset must be burned.’

Blaine was sitting bleary-eyed at his desk and grunted at Nikita as he sat down. Nikita was in no mood for conversation so set his bag down, and checking that Chang was no longer at the kitchen point, made his way over. He made himself a strong black coffee which he drank there and then, before pouring himself another, and getting himself some water. Arriving back at his desk, he took two aspirin and, despite feeling sick, the caffeine and drugs soon began to course through his veins and he felt an improvement.

He was very aware of Chang glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, but he focused instead on the large list of papers on the tray in front of him that he needed to work through. Field agents were gathering vast tomes of information for him to sift and analyse on a daily basis and it could be gruelling work requiring high levels of concentration.

He could hear Blaine muttering to himself as he was wading through his own pile, circling paragraphs and underlining words.

“You’re doing it again, Blaine,” Nikita said.

“Sorry, dude, I just find it so much easier to concentrate if I read aloud to myself.”

“Most of us grow out of that at around the age of ten.”

“At my high school most graduates only had the reading age of ten so just be grateful that I’m able to read at all.”

“You’re right, what was I thinking? I’m so grateful,” said Nikita.

“You’re a mean drunk.”

“On the contrary, I am a very loveable drunk. It’s the hangovers that make me mean.”

Blaine laughed and then scrunched his eyes up and rubbed his temples. “Don’t make me laugh this morning. Not cool.”

“You’re right, silence would really be the best thing for both of us this morning,” said Nikita, winking.

Blaine scrunched up a piece of paper and threw it at Nikita. “OK, OK, point taken!”

Nikita returned to his papers, many of which were reporting largely insignificant information. He had to go through them in painstaking detail; it was the not the sort of work he had imagined doing when being trained to be a spy. So many of the days working as an analyst for the CIA, particularly in the Soviet Counter-intelligence Branch, were spent poring over reams of paper; pages and pages documenting the movements of KGB officers and political figures in a bid to understand underlying intent, to make connections, identify trends and predict future activity and movements.

However, working as an embedded spy made the process slightly different. For Nikita, he could clearly put faces to many of the names he read about, and had to fight the urge to give up information on those Soviets that had treated him most cruelly. His days were an exercise in swimming against the tide, while doing enough good analysis to keep his job.

He was constantly astounded at the amount of paperwork the CIA produced, and the level of contact CIA agents were required to keep with station chiefs. At the KGB it had been instilled in him to avoid leaving a paper trail at all costs. Cables were rarely sent, and every KGB agent from junior lieutenants up to rezidents was tested regularly on their ability to covertly dispatch pouches of undeveloped microfilm, which would be sent on to Moscow to be developed and printed. A KGB officer was held personally responsible for every single piece of paper that he printed. ‘You are expected to be self-sufficient and able to handle your assignments with minimal input. You do not seek support from your superiors unless absolutely necessary.’ The words of his trainers echoed around Nikita’s head.

Sorting through the papers he came across a document that he knew would be there. The file was a plain pale brown, no different from many of the others, but this one was titled ‘Domestic Activity’.

Unusually, it hadn’t come across from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but was a file that had been passed to him from the Soviet-East (SE) European division of the Department of Operations within the CIA, based within these very headquarters. Nikita knew of the department, with their inevitably being a great deal of overlap between the two, but also a great deal of competition, and the SE division usually tried to avoid handing over information to the counter-intelligence division if they could avoid it.

There was nothing to distinguish the file at all, but upon seeing it Nikita instinctively knew that this was the one he had been looking for. He opened it and placed it down on top of the other files and papers. There were only three pages in the folder. The first was headlined ‘Suspected USSR activity on US Soil’.

SUSPECTED USSR ACTIVITY ON US SOIL — OCTOBER 1987

 

It is well understood that there are spies from the Soviet Union operating on US soil, mainly from the KGB. However, following the signing of the INF Treaty, espionage activity has appeared to slow as relations between both nations show signs of improvement.

Recent reports from the FBI and NSA point to potential increased covert Soviet activity on American soil, with numerous assassinations that would be in direct contravention of the rules of the Cold War to date, and if proven, could be considered an act of war.

In light of General Secretary Petrenko’s policy of Glasnost and suggestions that they may be withdrawing from the Afghan-Soviet war which would