The Main Enemy Milton Bearden (read full novel .txt) 📖

then zoom in on individual protesters being confronted by undercover agents and by police, he realized with a jolt that he was watching, in real time, how Czech security was responding to the revolution.

The shifting camera angles and feeds from around the city suggested which protests and protesters the Czechs most feared, while close-ups of agents hidden in the crowds revealed how the Czech government was scrambling to try to respond in an effort to disrupt the demonstrations.

“Start taping,” Manners told his communicator.

It was the best live coverage that the CIA had obtained in any of the revolutions sweeping across Eastern Europe that fall and winter. After recording a few hours’ worth of video, Manners went to see his boss, American ambassador Shirley Temple Black. He thought the former child star might enjoy a good show, so he asked her to come to the CIA station and sat her down for a front-row seat to watch the Velvet Revolution unfold.

Langley, November 29, 1989

Redmond stuck his head in my office. “The bureau’s got a guy from the Second Chief Directorate in New York,” he said.

Actually, it turned out to be an ex-KGB man, Sergei Papushin, who’d quit his job and moved into Russia’s new economy. Papushin had taken a job with an oil company. He’d come to New York on business, promptly got seriously drunk, and washed up in a hospital in New Jersey, where the police, and later the FBI, found him. As he sobered up, the FBI learned from him that he’d been in the Second Chief Directorate and decided to pitch him to see if he would work for them. The FBI knew that officers from the Second Chief Directorate, the KGB’s secretive counterintelligence arm, were hard to come by.

Frightened by the experience, Papushin rushed back to New York, where he went to the Soviet mission to report the approach. Incredibly, the security officer at the mission told him to forget about it and get on with his business.

Instead, Papushin changed his mind. He called the FBI back and asked for asylum.

“When do we get a shot at him?” I asked Redmond.

“We’re setting it up with the bureau now.”

We were back to business—but somehow, in the midst of the revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe, I couldn’t get too excited over this defector.

Moscow, November 29, 1989

Rem Krassilnikov dialed the home number of Mike Cline, our new Moscow chief, and waited.

“Hello?” a man’s voice answered.

“Oh, hello, Michael,” Krassilnikov said in his unmistakable accent, stretching out Cline’s name. “This is Gavrilov. I was wondering if we could meet for a few moments tomorrow to discuss a matter of some importance.”

Cline knew what Krassilnikov wanted. “Yes, I can do that,” he said quickly. “What time?”

“Will noon be satisfactory?”

“Noon will be fine,” Cline said in the same guarded language he always used on a phone he knew was live-monitored by the KGB. Never mind that it was the KGB who was actually calling—old habits were hard to break.

“Then noon it is, tomorrow,” the KGB counterintelligence chief said, and rang off.

The next day at noon sharp, Mike Cline walked along the ring road toward the Chinese restaurant that had been preselected as the site for these furtive meetings. Cline had made his first call to activate the Gavrilov channel when he’d arrived in Moscow eight months earlier as Jack Downing’s replacement, and he and Krassilnikov had agreed then that the Chinese restaurant would be their established rendezvous point. But since then they’d had almost no contact—it was as if the CIA-KGB hot line had gone cold.

Nearing the site, Cline spotted the black Volga pulled up against the curb, its engine running, spewing exhaust fumes into the cold air. Krassilnikov was huddled in the backseat, a woolen muffler around his throat and his hat pulled just above his ears. As Cline approached the car, both Krassilnikov and his driver got out. Krassilnikov offered his hand and drew the CIA man into the backseat of the overheated Volga.

With the driver standing dutifully out of earshot and smoking a cigarette, Krassilnikov told Cline that he thought it was time for a meeting at a higher level. The KGB side would be represented by himself and Leonid Nikitenko, chief of Directorate K, counterintelligence, of the First Chief Directorate. They would be able to meet their American counterparts in either Tokyo or Helsinki in the next month. The American side could take their pick, Krassilnikov offered.

Cline wrote down three words—“Tokyo, Helsinki, December”—and turned to Krassilnikov. “Is there anything special you’d like to talk about?” he asked.

“Nothing special,” Krassilnikov said. “It’s just been too long since we’ve gotten together.”

Cline added a fourth word to his notes, “agenda,” and underlined it. He told Krassilnikov he’d get back to him and stepped out of the car. He had no inclination to be chatty. It was not Cline’s nature to hang out with the opposition on their own turf.

Langley, November 29, 1989

Stolz called down to tell me that he’d already talked to Gus Hathaway and that Gus would be accompanying me on the Gavrilov outing. “What do you think it’s about?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But it’s been two years since we had an offshore Gavrilov meeting—they broke off contact in 1987. Maybe their new team wants to see our new team.”

The CIA and KGB had always sent two senior officials apiece to Gavrilov meetings, except for the brief and infrequent encounters between the CIA’s Moscow station chief and Krassilnikov. With two officers from each side present, the possibility of misadventure was greatly reduced. It eliminated the suspicions that one officer had been pitched by the other side and hadn’t reported it fully. In the world of espionage, doubts, once raised, always lingered. So we went into the Gavrilov meetings two by two.

Gus and I met with Stolz later that morning, and we decided that we’d go to the meeting mostly just to listen. Since the KGB asked for the meeting, we’d hear them out and see what was