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

of officers crossing over—the acting Rezident in London, the counterintelligence officer in Lagos, and now the two officers from the Washington Rezidentura. Add to the mix the peculiar case of Vitaly Yurchenko, and you had five. As Val Aksilenko struggled with his thoughts, he thought maybe the number could go even one higher, to six. Yes, he’d add the convoluted case of Vladimir Mikhailovich Vetrov, the Line T guy executed for spying for the French two years ago. That was a case of clever misdirection if he ever saw one.

Vladimir Vetrov was a wild man by First Chief Directorate standards. He was strong and physical, with a quick temper. Some thought him abusive—he’d been reprimanded in the past for his outbursts, one time for beating one of his bosses almost to a pulp. In addition to his abusive side, Vetrov was an unabashed Francophile who made no attempt to hide his admiration for almost all things French. It was an appreciation he’d picked up during his Paris posting in the late 1960s, and he still carried a case of French champagne in the trunk of his car, “just in case,” he always said.

So it was no real surprise, at least at first, when in February 1982 word shot through Yasenevo that Vetrov had been arrested for the murder of a homeless vagabond in a Moscow park where he was having a “French liaison” with a woman described as Vetrov’s mistress. According to the initial story, Vetrov and his mistress were happened upon by a park denizen, who attempted to shake down the KGB officer. In a burst of temper, Vetrov set upon the man and killed him with a knife. Then, possibly fearing that his mistress would betray him to the police, he stabbed her and left her for dead. Then, incredibly, he returned to the scene of the crime an hour later and was spotted by his mistress, who was not seriously wounded after all. He was arrested on the spot, and in a particularly swift case of Soviet justice, he was tried and sentenced to twelve years in prison. Later, nobody would ever recall hearing the actual name of the vagabond Vetrov had murdered.

Then the story began to change. The supposed mistress turned out to be a notorious First Directorate sex groupie who had bedded down as many KGB foreign intelligence officers as she could chalk up in the few years she had been hanging around the gates of Yasenevo. Then the murdered “vagabond” was transformed into another KGB officer, a jealous lover who happened upon the couple locked in an embrace and fought with Vetrov. But neither was available to tell her or his own story—the woman disappeared, and the man Vetrov killed was never named. Then in 1984, the other shoe dropped when the story of Vetrov’s arrest and execution for spying for the French flashed through the First Directorate.

Whispers and speculation began immediately. In the end, Aksilenko began to doubt the entire Vetrov legend, with the notable exception of his execution. He already dismissed the murder in the park as contrived, and the idea of Vetrov betraying his treason in letters to his wife or to a prison snitch didn’t pass the most basic test of logic. No KGB man would have poured his heart out in a letter. He would have toughed it out in prison for ten or twelve years; it was long, but nowadays there were worse places to be. Something else must have happened to Vetrov—of this, Val Aksilenko was now convinced.

Now, against the backdrop of all the other revelations of treason in Yasenevo over the last year, it finally seemed to fit. The Vetrov story was part of the grand deceptions, the elaborate smoke screens, surrounding the betrayals of so many Yasenevo officers in the last two years.

What the hell was going on? Aksilenko asked himself. What were they hiding?

Then came the biggest shock of the year.

Walking into Dmitri Yakushkin’s office in mid-July, Aksilenko found the KGB general engrossed in a report. He could see from across the desk that it was top secret. Aksilenko muttered a familiar greeting, but Yakushkin didn’t respond, and he sat in awkward silence until Yakushkin finally lifted his eyes. After staring vacantly at Aksilenko for a moment, Yakushkin handed the paper across his desk.

Aksilenko began to read a summary of the arrest of GRU General Dmitri Polyakov. As he read, Aksilenko glanced self-consciously over the top of the paper at Yakushkin, who seemed to be disoriented and devastated by the report of Polyakov’s treachery. Finally, his voice shaking, Yakushkin spoke.

“This man is a general, like me, Valentin. Who are we to trust? If we can’t trust a general, who can we trust?”

Aksilenko had no answer—the question didn’t demand one. He felt uncomfortable, not only because of Yakushkin’s strange demeanor, but because the document he had been handed was so clearly restricted to a level of access high above his own.

New York, August 23, 1986

There were two unique characteristics to the FBI’s operation that led to the arrest of Soviet scientist Gennady Zakharov on espionage charges during the dog days of August 1986. The first was that the entire operation had, from the outset, been a sting designed to entrap Zakharov, a physicist assigned to the United Nations in New York, into committing acts that would get him arrested. The second was that Gennady Zakharov was living and working in the United States as a UN employee without diplomatic immunity.

The KGB interpreted this operation as a profound breach of etiquette. There would have to be payback. It wouldn’t take the Soviets long to identify an American living in Moscow without diplomatic immunity who could serve their purposes.

Moscow, 1220 Hours, August 30, 1986

Nicholas Daniloff, Moscow correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, had just left his last meeting with Mikhail Luzin, his “Misha from Frunze,” a young Russian who in the past had provided insights into the heavy toll that the war in Afghanistan