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

who wanted to “come over to your side.” The man hadn’t sounded like a crackpot, the colleague had said.

After a ten-minute wait the phone rang. Shorer picked it up on the third ring.

“Shorer.”

Yurchenko began with his explanation. “Mr. David Shorer, I am a Soviet official who is interested—”

Shorer cut him off. “Where are you now?”

“Across the street from the entrance to your embassy.”

“Hang up the phone and walk across the street to the American embassy now. I will meet you at the main entrance.”

Yurchenko put down the receiver in the public telephone booth in the Ambasciatore Hotel and began to walk the last few hundred yards of his long journey. Shorer made his way to Post One, the main entrance of the majestic nineteenth-century Palazzo Margherita on Rome’s stylish, tree-lined Via Veneto that served as the American embassy. A colleague was already positioned in the small office where Shorer would take his Soviet visitor. The concealed tape and video recorders were being loaded and checked, and the Soviet defector kit was being put in place. Shorer arrived at Post One just as the tall KGB colonel pushed through the door.

Shorer intercepted Yurchenko before anyone else could get to him. “Do you have any identification?”

“I am Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko,” he said, handing over his Soviet diplomatic passport. “I am a colonel in the KGB, Department One, First Chief Directorate.”

Shorer had spent his career in the Soviet/East European Division and knew in an instant that the biggest counterintelligence catch in the history of the CIA had just dropped in his lap. He hastily ushered Yurchenko to the “walk-in room” and asked him to sit in a straight-backed chair on one side of a table. Shorer took the other chair and pressed a button under the table, activating the video recorder concealed in a bookcase behind him. On the table before him lay a folder containing all the documents he would need in the next crucial hours with the man who now sat before him.

“Please state precisely who you are and why you have come to us,” Shorer said as he hit the record button of the tape player on the table and began arranging the forms in both Russian and English for Yurchenko to read and sign.

Yurchenko faced the bookcase squarely, assuming correctly the location of the concealed videocamera, and began to speak in heavily accented English. His head was almost spinning. He had so much to say and had planned this moment in his mind over and over again since his mother had died. But now he didn’t know where to begin. Then a sense of calm came over him, and he began, “I am Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko. I am a colonel, soon to be a general, in the KGB. . . .” Dave Shorer was furiously scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad.

Langley, 1230 Hours, August 1, 1985

The handful of senior officers at Langley aware of the drama unfolding in Rome had been in high spirits ever since the arrival of the first cable from Dave Shorer summarizing Yurchenko’s defection. Burton Gerber notified Clair George and his deputy, Ed Juchniewicz, and raised the question of informing the FBI. George decided that Gerber should tell the FBI about Yurchenko later that same morning at a farewell luncheon for Edward O’Malley, the outgoing chief of the FBI’s Intelligence Division. Ultimately, the FBI would have a high interest in what Yurchenko had to say, particularly since he had been posted to Washington, D.C., a few years back.

As visiting FBI officials and their CIA counterparts, about two dozen in all, gathered in the posh seventh-floor executive dining room a few doors down from Bill Casey’s suite, Gerber and counterintelligence chief Gus Hathaway took Ed O’Malley aside and gave him the news. Yurchenko’s name meant nothing to the CIA seniors or their FBI counterparts, so the full impact of the defection was not yet clear. No mention of the defection was made to the broader audience at the luncheon.

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, 1620 Hours, August 1, 1985

Something close to an animal scream in the adjoining office brought me out of my chair. I quickly stepped around the corner into Burton Gerber’s office, where I found my new boss engrossed in an immediate-precedence, restricted handling cable. Gerber tore off a copy and handed it to me without comment as he continued to read. I was half-way through the first page when he glanced at his watch, wondering how long it would take Clair George and Ed Juchniewicz, two floors up, to call. They were the only other recipients of messages transmitted in this restricted channel and would probably be reading their copies at this moment.

CITE: ROME 22345 011405Z AUG 85

IMMEDIATE HEADQUARTERS SECRET/RESTRICTED HANDLING

WNINTEL

REF: ROME 22340

1. FURTHER TO DEBRIEFING OF KGB COLONEL VITALY SERGEYEVICH YURCHENKO DPOB 2 MAY 1936, SMOLENSK, USSR. DEBRIEFING CONTINUES IN WALK-IN ROOM, BUT FOLLOWING SALIENT, POSSIBLY ACTIONABLE TAKE FROM INITIAL DEBRIEF OF YURCHENKO WILL BE OF SPECIAL INTEREST:

A. THERE NO IMMINENT SOVIET PLANS TO ATTACK U.S.

B. YURCHENKO KNOWS OF U.S. VOLUNTEER TO KGB, CODE-NAMED “MR. ROBERT,” WHO DESCRIBED AS FORMER CIA OFFICER PIPELINED FOR ASSIGNMENT TO MOSCOW BUT FIRED FOR UNSUITABILITY ISSUES AND POLYGRAPH PROBLEMS IN 1983–84. YURCHENKO ADVISES THAT “MR. ROBERT” PROVIDED IDENTIFYING DATA ON SOVIET DEFENSE INDUSTRY SCIENTIST ADOLF TOLKACHEV RECENTLY ARRESTED IN MOSCOW IN JUNE THIS YEAR FOR ESPIONAGE ON BEHALF OF CIA, AS WELL AS CIA ASSET IN BUDAPEST DESCRIBED AS SOVIET COLONEL, POSSIBLY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER, KNOWN WITHIN CIA CIRCLES AS “THE ANGRY COLONEL.” KGB COUNTERINTELLIGENCE IS CONDUCTING EXHAUSTIVE SEARCH FOR ANGRY COLONEL BUT WITHOUT SUCCESS TO DATE.

C. YURCHENKO ALSO CLAIMS “MR. ROBERT” HAS COMPROMISED CIA TECHNICAL OPERATION IN MOSCOW, AND POSSIBLY ONE OTHER TECHNICAL OPERATION CIA RUNNING AGAINST USSR.

D. “MR. ROBERT” REPORTEDLY MET SECRETLY WITH KGB IN VIENNA WITHIN LAST FEW WEEKS.

E. YURCHENKO ALSO REPORTS KGB HAS RECRUITED NSA EMPLOYEE WHO PROVIDED DETAILS ON SENSITIVE NSA MARITIME OPERATIONS AGAINST SOVIET NORTH SEA SUBMARINE FLEET. YURCHENKO CANNOT RECALL NAME OF NSA EMPLOYEE, BUT MET THE VOLUNTEER PERSONALLY WHILE HE SERVED AT SOVIET