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

silent as he contemplated what Klimenko might be asking of him. Just thirty-two, Aleksandr Zhomov had spent most of the last ten years following the Americans in Moscow. Along the way, he had learned English well enough to converse in it with almost native fluency, even though he had never met any of his American targets. But he felt he knew them all. He had listened carefully to what they said to one another when they felt they were alone in their apartments. He knew when and how often they made love to their wives, or maybe even the wives of other men. He knew what problems they were having on the job in Moscow or back home when they received telephone calls on the Moscow-Washington tie-line. Zhomov and his people knew almost everything you’d want to know about the Americans, except what they might do next. And now Klimenko was asking him to come up with a way to deal with that.

“How many people will I have on this?” Zhomov asked.

“Just you.” Klimenko held up a single finger, and his expression, a sort of half smile, didn’t change. “You’ll be all alone.”

“Rem Sergeyevich?” Zhomov’s question was clear. Was their boss Krassilnikov in on this?

“You won’t need to discuss this with Rem Sergeyevich. He doesn’t need to be bothered.”

Klimenko’s answer spoke most loudly in what it did not say. Zhomov took the answer at face value, unable to decide whether Krassilnikov was in or out. Klimenko helped him understand.

“You’ll report to me and I’ll report to the Chairman.”

“So that’s it. You, me, and Viktor Mikhailovich.”

“That’s it, Sasha. You, me and Chairman Chebrikov.” Klimenko finally smiled, flashing Russian gold.

Later that night when he was alone, Sasha Zhomov thought deeply about the new requirement Klimenko had levied on him. He could do it. But it would have to be something bold, something that broke all the old rules. He poured himself another drink, this time Georgian brandy, and thought some more about his plan. Yes, he thought, it could work. The first thing he would have to do was start a few quiet interrogations of the traitors, the ones who had not been dispatched by a bullet. That would be a good place to start.

   PART TWO   

THE COLD WAR TURNS HOT IN AFGHANISTAN

   1   

Islamabad, June 1, 1986

Two weeks after Clair George told me I was being assigned to Islamabad to run the Afghan covert action program, I made a quick visit to Pakistan for briefings and to take the lay of the land. The visit gave me a chance to meet the CIA’s man in charge, Bill Piekney, and to get his view on how the war was going, both politically and on the battlefield.

Slender but not tall, well groomed and soft-spoken, Bill Piekney was a consummate CIA man who had enjoyed a rapid rise up through the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. The former Navy officer knew the rules, did as he was told, and did it well, and for two years running the covert action program in Pakistan, Piekney had played by the rules. Steady as she goes, had been the order. Don’t let things get out of control.

He’d worked well with the Pakistanis to keep the supplies moving and to keep the cost of the occupation of Afghanistan high for the Soviets. But a shift in Soviet tactics from broad rural pacification efforts to more sharply focused helicopter-borne special operations against resistance infiltration routes and strongholds had paid off for the Soviets. The war was going badly for the resistance, and for Bill Piekney.

Now, with a change in ground rules in Washington, Piekney was caught in a political bait-and-switch game among congressional hawks, the Pakistani government, and the CIA’s seventh floor.

Rawalpindi, Pakistan, January 1986

Piekney could feel his jaw dropping as the words that Senator Orrin Hatch had flown halfway around the world to hear came tumbling out of the mouth of Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, the soft-spoken president of Pakistan. Why, of course, yes, certainly, Pakistan will permit the United States to ship Stinger missiles to the Afghan rebels through our territory, Piekney heard the ever adaptable Zia tell the anti-Communist Republican from Utah. Yes, certainly, we will train the mujahideen in their use. Yes, I agree, it is time to turn the heat up on the Soviet Army.

Zia, now in his seventh year as Pakistan’s self-appointed leader, had entered politics as had so many of the leaders in the Third World, wearing khaki. He had been made Army chief in 1976 by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s charismatic Prime Minister, in the fatally mistaken belief that he was controllable, perhaps even a little slow out of the starting blocks. A fervent Islamist, Zia would be either at the mosque or out on the golf course, Bhutto had thought, and was not likely to become a threat to his own leadership.

A year later, Zia was running Pakistan and Bhutto was sitting in jail waiting for the hangman. In the face of almost universal outcry and condemnation from the West, Zia had Bhutto tried on a variety of still controversial charges and sentenced to death. To everyone’s surprise, the death sentence was actually carried out in April 1979, eight months before the Soviets launched their Afghan adventure. Washington turned a cold shoulder to the generals in Islamabad after Bhutto’s execution, but the estrangement would be brief. After one look at the map of Central Asia, President Jimmy Carter understood that if he was to oppose the Soviet grab in Afghanistan, it would have to be in partnership with Zia ul-Haq.

Carter moved quickly. In early 1980, he sent his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to Islamabad for consultations with the new leader of Pakistan. The two agreed to join forces, and the United States quietly began to assemble the wherewithal to mount a sustained effort to support the Afghan resistance, and to do it in secret. But on a not-so-secret side trip, Brzezinski traveled the length of the Khyber Pass