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

The CIA chief in Lisbon reported that same day that he was convinced the volunteer was a provocation. He suggested that the package from Smetanin be turned over to Portuguese counterintelligence. But the SE Division chief at the time was a survivor of the Angleton era and had fought such paranoid fears throughout his entire career. He strongly believed that if CIA officers didn’t pursue potential recruits, there was no reason for them to be in the field. He sent a cable back to Lisbon not to do anything until they received instructions from SE Division on how to handle the volunteer.

In the summary of the operation in the notebook, there were references to the first clandestine meetings with Smetanin. He said he had stolen almost $400,000 from his GRU Rezidentura and needed immediate help in replacing it before an upcoming audit that could expose him. He said that was why he had approached the Americans.

My eyes ran to the next entry in the notebook, one summarizing a grueling polygraph examination that had been administered to Smetanin in Lisbon. It showed that he had not been truthful about embezzling the funds. I recognized the name of the polygraph operator, an old German American professional most in the DO knew simply as “Hans.” During the interrogation, Smetanin had admitted to lying about the money. He figured the CIA would give him the money if they wanted the operation to continue. Smetanin was actually proud of the way he had handled his business dealings with the CIA. In the end, he got a good part of his money, and the CIA got its penetration of Soviet military intelligence.

As I returned the notebook to Gerber’s safe, I wondered if Redmond’s fears would mark the final entry for GTMILLION.

Back in my office, I took stock of what I had witnessed in my first five weeks as Gerber’s deputy in SE Division. By now the initial furor over Edward Howard’s betrayal had subsided. Though few discussed it openly, the outrage over Howard’s treachery was now mixed with an odd sense of relief. There was a feeling that Howard had never really been a member of the DO brotherhood; the system had culled him before he ever made it through the probationary period. To be sure, the rationalizations couldn’t bring back Adolf Tolkachev. But at least the integrity of the DO remained somehow intact, or so the thinking went.

Only Paul Redmond was having none of it.

Langley, 0815 Hours, September 16, 1985

Every time I laid eyes on the angular features of Rod Carlson, I saw the face of Abraham Lincoln. Carlson was chief of the SE Division’s counterintelligence group, a rail-thin man who had spent his career in operations against the Soviet Union. Carlson first traveled to the USSR as a student “legal traveler” under a CIA program in the late 1950s. He was a meticulous man, some thought humorless, who never displayed doubts about his life’s work against the USSR. Carlson was approaching the end of his career—he had announced plans to retire in a few months—and was planning to spend his time restoring old houses. His attention to detail would fit nicely with his new pursuit.

In Gerber’s office, Carlson briefed the SE chief, Redmond, and me on his meeting two nights earlier with a human penetration of the Washington Rezidentura, a KGB Line X officer responsible for scientific and technical intelligence in the United States. The Soviet agent was known as PIMENTA within the FBI and as GTGENTILE within the CIA.

“We met on Saturday night at a prearranged site near the walking path along the C and O Canal. The bureau provided countersurveillance. It was a clean meeting and lasted about eight minutes. The take on the Rezidentura’s activities since our last joint meeting was modest.” Carlson’s briefings were always dry and stuck to the essentials.

“At the end of the meeting, PIMENTA said that Androsov called the line chiefs separately over the last few days—he’d returned from Moscow earlier in the week—and briefed them on the gossip at Center. The biggest nugget was that Androsov said a First Directorate officer had been arrested unloading a dead drop in early August.” Carlson glanced down at his notes. “The officer was a little drunk at the time he was arrested . . . no name was given . . . Androsov told one of the line chiefs that would probably come later and that anyone who knew the man would be asked to write the usual report on him. Androsov said the arrest was the result of the vigilance of the Second Directorate.” Carlson paused and checked his notes again.

“Androsov made it clear it was the Second Directorate and the surveillance guys in the Seventh Directorate that caught the Americans putting the dead drop down about two weeks earlier. They ran a stake-out on the drop site until the guy came around to pick it up. The dead drop was loaded with rubles.”

“It’s WEIGH.” Gerber’s voice was soft, without drama.

“It’s WEIGH,” Paul Redmond said in agreement.

“What did he say, Rod?” Gerber asked. “The part about them catching the drop being loaded.”

Carlson repeated what PIMENTA had told him, that the American special services officer had been spotted by a surveillance team of the Seventh Directorate while laying down the dead drop, probably sometime in late July.

“It was the casuals under the bridge,” Gerber said.

Gerber had been worried ever since the July operation in Moscow, which called for Moscow to put down a rock loaded with cash for GTWEIGH in a field near a power pylon. In a follow-up report, the Moscow case officer who had left the rock had said he had seen “casuals”—men or women who seemed to be in the area on their own business—about two hundred yards from the dead drop site. The case officer had decided to go through with the operation despite the casuals, and Gerber had wondered ever since whether that had