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

not certain what is meant by a ‘more rational’ relationship,” I said. “But I’m willing to explore it.”

I didn’t try to recruit Krassilnikov during our little walk, and he didn’t try to recruit me, though we both had such thoughts as we walked through the streets of Karlshorst. I also wondered if he’d been thinking of how Lubyanka had aced Langley in the PROLOGUE operation a few months back, but if he had, he gave no hint of it.

Back in the KGB safe house, we got down to business. Leonid Nikitenko, the counterintelligence chief from the First Directorate, was gregarious and voluble and seemed to have loosened up even more since our first meeting in Helsinki. At one point during our lunch break I said to Nikitenko, “Leonid, you like this business of intelligence, don’t you?”

He smiled and thought for a minute, and then he said, “Milton, there is no business like it. We are politicians. We are soldiers. And, above all, we are actors on a wonderful stage. I cannot think of a better business than the intelligence business. But now that we are talking the philosophy of the intelligence business, I have a question for you.”

Here it comes, I thought.

“Why, Milton, are so many of our First Directorate officers going over to your side these days? I have looked into each case, and none of them, not one of them, demonstrated antisocial vulnerabilities before they went over to you. Most of them had honors diplomas from our universities—red diplomas with gold letters. They were our best officers, with good prospects. Was it their wives? Were the wives unhappy? What is happening to them?”

I thought before answering. We had indeed been bringing in a large number of young KGB majors and lieutenant colonels in recent months. Earlier in the morning, I had made my usual statement to our KGB hosts about the latest string of defections—they were safe and well and free, and if they wanted to talk to their old bosses, we’d be in touch. It was no longer what we used to call the “rummy rejects” of the system who were turning to us; we were getting their top officers now, who were coming to us with their own plans for making it in the West. We were delighted with the new quality of the defectors, and the KGB, not surprisingly, was troubled by it—and puzzled. Nikitenko, with his question, had given me an extremely informative window into the state of affairs in the KGB in those turbulent times. They were worried that their best officers were running for the door.

“Leonid,” I said at last, “let me answer your question with a story. Picture this. The scene is a boardroom of a large American dog food company. The CEO is haranguing his staff about the poor sales performance over the last quarter. He states with pride that his company’s product has the best nutritional values of all American brands. He says that the texture is the best and directs his staff to take a look inside the open dog food cans that have been set before each of them. He takes his own can and draws it to him. It even smells good, the CEO exclaims.” I paused for a moment to check the nearly blank faces of Nikitenko and Krassilnikov, both of whom were wondering where in the world I was leading them. Then I continued.

“‘So why,’ the CEO asks with great emotion, ‘are sales going down, down, down?’ There’s a nervous shuffle around the boardroom, and finally the vice president for sales raises his hand and utters just five words. ‘The dogs don’t like it!’”

Nikitenko looked at me for a moment, the reluctantly polite expression gone, and repeated the punch line incredulously. “Dogs don’t like it? Dogs don’t like it? What can this mean?”

Ted Price interjected, “It means that the dogs just don’t like it, Leonid. They’re looking for something at least different.”

Price, Cline, and I wondered if Leonid ever did get it. His foreign intelligence directorate had taken most of the heat over the last several months, with defections of First Directorate officers running one about every six weeks. The trickle had turned into a torrent, to the point that my budget for defectors needed constant reprogramming. Old averages were thrown out the window as the young KGB officers continued to come over to our side. As Nikitenko was making his representations about his officers gone missing, I would glance over at Rem Krassilnikov to see his reaction. Nothing. There was no sign of smugness that the First Directorate was taking so many hits; nor was there any sign that he thought this was his problem.

We would not meet with Leonid Nikitenko again. Some weeks later I would receive a message from Krassilnikov, relayed through Mike Cline in Moscow, advising us that Nikitenko had died suddenly in a Latin American country. It seemed there had been no foul play, but Rem asked if we could discreetly check on it for him and for the First Directorate. We did, and to the best of our understanding Nikitenko had died of a heart attack. I sent this to Mike Cline, who passed it on to Krassilnikov. I would wonder much later what the English-speaking counterintelligence chief had been doing down in Latin America when he died. Could he have been off to see one of the men who was betraying us from within?

Berlin, October 3, 1990

Ted Price, Mike Cline, and I had spent the final hours of October 2 among the crowds thronging East Berlin’s main avenue, Unter den Linden. When the clocks finally struck midnight, shifting the center of gravity of postwar Europe from a small town near the German border with France to the reborn colossus of an undivided Berlin, I felt a lingering sense of discomfort, something I couldn’t quite pin down. I thought of Krassilnikov’s words earlier that morning and wondered where he might be walking in this new Berlin.

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