Red traitor, p.3
Red Traitor, page 3
Arkhipov smiled crookedly. Of course he remembered the cook. K-19’s doctor had jammed a massive dose of diazepam into his arm to shut the man up when he wouldn’t stop screaming during the accident. Panic in a drowning submarine a thousand kilometers out in the North Atlantic could be as fatal as sinking to crush depth.
“Don’t mind either way. Satan or no Satan, a boat’s a boat.”
Arkhipov’s friend nodded sarcastically.
“Like I said. You’re a bad liar, Vasily. You said a general from Strategic Missile Forces was at your board?”
“Yeah. What was that?”
“They say anything about a special weapon, deployed on your new mission?”
“Special weapon?”
Timofey puffed air.
“Maybe just a rumor. Nothing to tell you as yet. How about a cognac? Doc says I shouldn’t—but fuck it, right?”
Arkhipov watched Zviagin’s bald head weave its way across the cafeteria counter. He looked down at his hands once more. Steadier.
3
Pioneers’ Ponds, Moscow
12 July 1962
Morozov walked out of his apartment building at half past ten into the rising heat of the Moscow summer morning. He carried his jacket slung over one shoulder and a canvas shopping bag in the other hand. Ignoring an elderly man feeding ducks by the pond, Morozov hurried toward the Mayakovskaya metro station. A young woman who had been checking her makeup in the window of a bakery spotted him, made a final adjustment to her hat, and set off in front of Morozov. Thirty yards behind, a lanky student also kept pace.
At Belorusskaya Station, Morozov trotted up the steps that led to the wide corridor that connected to the Circle Line platforms. In approved kontora-style, his two watchers bracketed their mark as he walked. He boarded a westbound train and exited at Kievskaya Station, making for the interchange with the Arbatsko–Pokrovskaya line. KGB junior lieutenant Mikhail Lyubimov, new out of the Dzerzhinsky academy and with Boris Schultz’s training seared freshly into his mind, was growing nervous. This second change of trains made close surveillance risky—the mark was more likely to notice familiar faces on two successive trains. Lyubimov risked glancing down the carriage at his female partner, Tatiana Dulatova, who had taken up position in the far corner. He was too far away to catch Tanya’s eye. A mistake, putting a pretty girl in the lead. Too conspicuous. The whole team knew by now that the old goat Morozov had a keen eye for the ladies.
The doors opened at Arbatskaya Station and Morozov was out ahead of both of them. Tanya, desperate to keep ahead of their mark, broke into a run, pushing past the commuters in a flurry of apologies. Again, a blunder. Lyubimov cursed his partner, struggling to keep his eye on Morozov’s balding head thirty yards in front as the crowd slowed to a slow shuffle in front of the escalators.
“Keep your eye on the people on the escalator as they come up into your eye line,” old Schultz had taught him. “You won’t see through the backs of people’s heads right in front of you, however hard you stare. Eyes only on the…?”
“Only on the escalator, Comrade Colonel,” the class had repeated.
But Lyubimov’s eyes weren’t on the escalator. They were on the steel barrier that separated the streams of passengers, looking for a place to duck under and jump the line. That was how he found himself face-to-face with his target, heading back toward the platforms. Morozov had ducked the barrier himself, donned his uniform cap and tunic, and switched direction. A primitive dry-cleaning trick, but an effective one.
Tanya would be near the top of the escalator by now. Lyubimov was on his own. Lose the mark, or get spotted? A calculated risk, and a dangerous one. He had to wait before Morozov was well out of sight before swinging athletically over the steel barrier and hurrying after him. But the kid was lucky. Morozov had just missed a train. His young shadow squeezed in almost alongside him on the next one. Lyubimov stuck with his target back to Kievskaya, and on to Oktyabrskaya. Four train changes now. By now Lyubimov had taken off his own jacket and pulled a summer cap low on his face, praying that the Colonel still hadn’t noticed him. The young agent felt a heady, nauseous thrill. His first real chase.
“Press kiosks are your friend,” Schultz had once intoned in his thin, whining voice. If you were checking for tails, that is. The ubiquitous kiosks often stood directly opposite the street entrances of metro stations, their row of angled vertical windows giving a helpful panorama of everyone who emerged. And sure enough, on exiting the Oktyabrskaya metro station, Morozov did indeed linger. He pretended to browse a selection of magazines for a full five minutes, forcing Lyubimov to take up a risky position in plain sight at a nearby trolleybus stop. That wily bastard Morozov knew every trick in the KGB countersurveillance book. But then again, Lyubimov remembered, it was his own teacher, Schultz, who had literally written the book.
The young watcher followed at a cautious distance as Morozov made his way to the Shokoladnitsa café on the corner of Kaluzhskaya Square. The place was crowded to capacity as usual, with a line of hopeful customers snaking out the door. Morozov walked blithely past the queue, scanned the large, table-filled space, and squeezed between the diners to join a young, dark-haired, strikingly beautiful woman at a corner table. She wore the olive-green uniform of an Army lieutenant and stood as Morozov approached. They did not salute, embrace, or shake hands. Their body language seemed formal. As Morozov began the long process of attracting a waiter’s attention, Lyubimov slipped outside to a public phone booth. A flip of his red KGB ID card was enough to cut short the conversation of the occupant and send the frightened man scurrying away. Lyubimov’s call to Special Cases’ emergency number connected on the first ring.
“PLUTO has made contact. Requesting a reinforced team of watchers. Photographer. Two cars. Crash. Repeat, crash urgency.”
4
KGB Headquarters, Moscow
12 July 1962
The surveillance report was on Vasin’s desk within two hours. Schultz had trained the kid Lyubimov well, Vasin had to admit. And the old man had personally arrived on the scene in a radio car within eight minutes of his pupil’s call. By the time Morozov and his coffee companion had emerged—separately, Vasin noted—into the polluted air of the busy intersection, a kontora team as big as an opera chorus was ready for them.
Vasin pulled out a grainy, blown-up headshot of the woman, skimmed through Lyubimov’s notes, and looked up at the kid for explanation.
“She works at Gogolevsky Boulevard Thirteen, building three? What’s that?”
“Defense Ministry building, sir. Part of the General Staff headquarters. Newly repurposed, we think. Used to be a department of the Army Procurement Bureau. But the old institutional nameplate by the door has been taken down, sir.”
“An Aquarium office?” Vasin used the latest slang for the GRU, named for Soviet military intelligence’s newly built glass-fronted headquarters in Yasenevo in suburban Moscow, which resembled a vast fish tank.
“Not sure, sir.”
“Leave that to me. We’ll get someone on the inside to check it out. Meanwhile…” Vasin checked his watch. “You have a team to follow this woman home?”
Lyubimov nodded. They both knew the kontora would have no problem identifying Morozov’s woman the moment she put her key in any front door in Moscow.
Vasin dismissed the young officer and picked up the phone to make an urgent appointment with Orlov. For once, a piece of luck. After months of behaving like an ideal Soviet citizen, Morozov was finally acting like a spy.
5
Defense Ministry, Moscow
15 July 1962
The Ministry of Defense, like the Lubyanka, housed a myriad of cafeterias, each a signifier of complex codes of status and access. Orlov’s man on the inside of the Aquarium had chosen the largest, lowliest one, located in the basement.
“How will I know this Major Tokarev?” Vasin had asked Orlov.
“Unmistakable. Old cavalry man. Mustache. No hands.”
As lunchtime approached, the cavernous dining room filled with groups of uniformed young men and a few preening women secretaries, their handbags and scarves colorful splashes in a uniformly khaki, masculine world. Vasin nursed a cup of weak coffee. A wiry, mustachioed officer in breeches and high boots peered about the room. He was in late middle age, sporting an old-fashioned cavalry mustache. Vasin gestured discreetly with his cup and the old officer raised a black-gloved hand in salute. Vasin stood to shake the man’s outstretched hand—which turned out to be a hard plastic prosthesis set to a half-open grip. Tokarev’s other hand was plastic also.
No hands.
“Smolensk, 1943. Tried to toss a German hand grenade out of a trench. Wasn’t fast enough. Everyone wants to ask, so I save them the embarrassment. You don’t have to say anything.”
Tokarev sat, tucking his plastic hands under the table. His face was spattered with old pale-brown shrapnel scars, like splashed clay.
“General Orlov sends his greetings.”
“Bet he does. Send ’em back, with bells on.”
“You’re old friends?”
“One way to put it. Saved my backside, in his time. Got captured outside Mozhaisk in ’forty-one, escaped, ended up in the hands of SMERSH. The ‘Death to Spies’ outfit of the NKVD? Tasked with rooting out Fascist agents. Orlov decided I wasn’t one. Long story. Sent me back to the front. Helped me lend a hand to the war effort. Both of them, in fact. Good work, Colonel. One minute in, and you already know everything there is to know about me.”
Vasin ignored the old man’s sarcasm and nodded. Orlov sent you back, with his hook deep in your throat. Vasin knew how that felt.
“You must have been grateful.”
“Must have been innocent. Orlov said you needed help.”
Vasin glanced around.
“We’re going to talk here?”
“Neutral ground. You would stand out at the Aquarium. I would stand out at the kontora.”
“I need to find a woman.”
“Cherchez la femme.”
“Very funny. Colleague of yours. Spanish girl. Details are here.”
Vasin slid a thin file across the table, which Tokarev didn’t pick up. It took Vasin a moment to realize he couldn’t, with his hard prosthetic hands. Vasin opened the file and spread out the two typewritten pages. Tokarev leaned forward and scanned the document.
Sofia Rafaelovna Guzman, born 16 March 1932, in Barcelona, Spain. Resident of the USSR since February 1938. Unmarried. Current home address: a complex of Defense Ministry communal apartments for single officers on Malaya Gruzinskaya Street. That was as far as an evening rooting through the municipal housing registry and the kontora’s files had got Vasin’s team.
“So tell me—why do you need to know about this Spaniard, Sofia Rafaelovna?”
“Counter-intelligence operation.”
Tokarev raised an eyebrow—which Vasin took to mean, Keep talking.
“Got our eye on a possible enemy agent. He’s been talking to this girl. Need to find out why. Where she works. What she does. What she has access to.”
Tokarev seemed to mull asking for more particulars, but thought better of it.
“That’s the favor Orlov needs? I’ll see what I can do. Write.”
Vasin fished out a notebook and Tokarev dictated a series of telephone numbers.
“None of them secure. Now write yours for me. My notebook. Top right pocket.”
Vasin gingerly reached across the table and pulled a black book from Tokarev’s tunic pocket, dutifully wrote down his own contacts, and tucked it back in, along with the sheet with Sofia’s details.
“How do you…”
“Use a phone? Dress? Write? Piss? With a little help from my friends. Looking forward to getting to know you better. Maybe I’ll even play the piano for you.”
Vasin stood quickly, embarrassed. He chose an awkward half salute rather than attempting to shake hands, and headed for the exit.
* * *
—
Three days after his meeting with Tokarev, Vasin received a letter marked “personal” at the office. It was one of those prestamped folding letters sold to tourists, decorated with views of the medieval cathedrals of Suzdal. On the inside were just three lines.
“Dearest Comrade—heartfelt Communist greetings to you and to our mutual friend! Will be in our Socialist capital this week and will wait for you between 1800 and 1830 on Wednesday at the back entrance of the Ministry of Defense building at Frunzenskaya. My firmest comradely handshake to you, VT.”
6
Frunze Embankment, Moscow
19 July 1962
Tokarev limped over to Vasin’s Moskvich car, pushed down the door handle with a practiced movement of his hip, and clambered inside.
“Here.”
The battered leather briefcase that Tokarev held cradled in his plastic arms had tooth marks on its straps. Vasin opened it and slipped out a slim file. The cardboard cover also had the imprint of human teeth on it. Quite delicate, just on one corner, but unmistakable. Tokarev’s equivalent of a fingerprint.
“You’re just going to stare at it?”
A summary of Sofia Guzman’s personnel file, evidently written by Tokarev in an outlandish, oversize scrawl. Parents—Rafael and Maria Guzman, both Spanish Communist Party members. Raised in an orphanage outside Moscow after arriving in the USSR in 1938, aged six. Graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow—the GRU’s finishing school for its foreign service operatives—in 1953 with a Red Star diploma. Worked as a translator at the Ministry of Defense ever since. Fluent in Spanish, French, and Russian, commended for exemplary service in 1960.
“She came to the USSR on her own, as an orphan? What happened to her parents?”
“Spanish Communists sent their kids to the USSR to keep them safe from the civil war, at the invitation of Comrade Stalin. Thousands of them came over. Most went back after Stalin died.”
“So she wasn’t an orphan?”
Tokarev just shrugged. “One way or another, I guess she is now.”
Vasin turned the page. A list of Sofia Guzman’s assignments to various departments dealing with Spanish-speaking countries. The last entry was dated nearly three months earlier. “Twenty-second of April 1962: Assigned to Operation Anadyr following Grade III security clearance.”
“What’s…”
“Operation Anadyr? Good question. In a word, it’s Cuba. In two words: big and secret. Should have seen their faces when I asked around. Why are you asking, Major? Who’s been talking about Anadyr, Major? I got the message: Stay the fuck out of it. All I can tell you is that Operation Anadyr was assigned a building of its own back in March, near the General Staff on Gogolevsky Boulevard. Kicked out a whole department to house them. And I can tell you they’ve been drafting in people like it’s harvest time at the collective farm. Several hundred officers, at least. Every Spanish speaker in the Aquarium’s got their marching orders. And it’s all Cuba, Cuba, Cuba. Doing exactly what in fraternal Socialist Cuba—don’t ask. But if your spook is sniffing around Sofia, it’s because he’s interested in Anadyr. Or maybe he just fancies some Spanish ass.”
Vasin folded the notes and handed back Tokarev’s briefcase. The old major nodded and used his elbow to open the car door.
“Tokarev…”
“If I hear anything more about Anadyr, or about Cuba, or about Sofia, I’m to let you know? Yes, repeat, no.”
The door slammed shut.
7
Maurice Thorez Embankment, Moscow
21 July 1962
The riverboat terminal by the Estrada Theater was crowded with out-of-town tourists. Vasin pressed through a crowd of sunburned men in identical open-weave porkpie hats and women in gaudy printed-cotton summer dresses. He spotted Vadim Kuznetsov sitting on a granite embankment, fanning himself irritably with a wide-brimmed Panama and looking like a cartoon capitalist in his luxurious foreign suit.
“Vadim! Fancy an ice cream?”
Kuznetsov hopped down from the low wall, brushed the seat of his trousers, and fixed Vasin with a dark stare.
“Ah. My old, high-flying comrade Alexander Vasin. Just when I was thinking that I don’t have enough excitement in my life—there you are, on the phone! Somehow, you knew I was in Moscow and where to find me. Only true comrades go to such lengths to ferret out their old friends. I’m flattered.”
“I’ve missed you, Kuznetsov. I was lucky to catch you here in our glorious Socialist Motherland, apparently. How are the tropics?”
“The tropics are…tropical. I suppose you’ll be wanting me to thank you for my assignment to fraternal Cuba?”
“My friend—you earned that posting.”
Kuznetsov rolled his eyes.
“Vasin, did I ever mention that you’re trouble?”
“Can’t recall that you ever did, no. Come on—our boat leaves in five minutes.”
“Our boat?”
“We’re going on a river cruise. I have tickets.”
“You’re putting me on a damn barge so I can’t run away from whatever heinous favor you’re about to ask me to do for you? Did I guess right?”
The steam horn of the sleek white cruiser blew. Vasin, grinning, pulled his comrade into a trot toward the gangplank.
The two men settled into seats on the upper deck. A party of Central Asian workers, all women in headscarves, gossiped excitedly beside them as the craft pulled out into the stream of the Moscow River and nosed eastward, toward the Kremlin.
