The Deceiver (32 page)

In fact, Rabbi Birnbaum was neither a rabbi nor an American nor gay. His real name was David Thornton, and he was one of the best makeup artists in British films. The difference between makeup for the stage and that needed for films is that on stage the lights are fierce and the distance from the audience considerable. In films there are also lights, but the camera may have to work in tight close-up, a few inches from the face. Film makeup therefore has to be more subtle, more realistic.

David Thornton had worked for years at Pinewood Studios, where he was always in demand. He was also one of that corps of experts that the British Secret Intelligence Service seems amazingly able to draw upon when it needs one.

The second man to arrive in Moscow came direct from London by British Airways. He was Denis Gaunt, looking exactly like himself, save that his hair was gray and he looked fifteen years older than his real age. He had a slim attaché case chained discreetly to his left wrist, and he wore the blue tie bearing the motif of the greyhound, the sign of one of the Corps of Queen’s Messengers.

All countries have diplomatic couriers who spend their lives ferrying documents from embassy to embassy and back home. They are covered by the usages of the Treaty of Vienna as diplomatic personnel, and their luggage is not searched. Gaunt’s passport was in another name, but it was British and completely valid. He presented it and was waved through the formalities.

A Jaguar from the embassy met him, and he was taken at once to the embassy building, arriving there an hour after Thornton. He was then able to give Thornton all the tools of the makeup artist’s trade, which he had brought in his own suitcase.

The third to arrive was Sam McCready, on a Finnair flight from Helsinki. He, too, had a valid British passport in a false name, and he, too, was disguised. But in the heat of the aircraft, something had gone wrong.

His ginger wig had come slightly askew, and a wisp of darker hair showed from beneath it. The spirit gum that retained one corner of his equally ginger moustache seemed to have melted so that a fragment of the moustache had detached itself from his upper lip.

The passport officer stared at the picture in the passport and back at the man in front of him. The faces were the same—hair, moustache and all. There is nothing illegal about wearing a wig, even in Russia; many bald men do. But a moustache that comes unstuck? The passport officer, not the same one who had seen Rabbi Birnbaum—for Scheremetyevo is a big airport—also consulted a senior officer, who peered through a one-way mirror.

From behind the same mirror, a camera clicked several times, orders were given, and a number of men went from standby to full operation status. When McCready emerged from the concourse, two unmarked Moskvitch cars were waiting. He too was collected by a British Embassy car, of lower standing than a Jaguar, and was driven to the embassy, followed all the way by the two KGB vehicles, who reported back to their superiors in the Second Chief Directorate.

In the late afternoon the photos of the strange visitor arrived at Yazenevo, the headquarters of the KGB’s foreign intelligence arm, the First Chief Directorate. They ended up on the desk of the Deputy Head, General Vadim V. Kirpichenko. He stared at them, read the attached report about the wig and the corner of the moustache, and took them down to the photographic lab.

“See if you can remove the wig and moustache,” he ordered. The technicians went to work with the airbrush.

When General Kirpichenko saw the finished result, he almost laughed out loud. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “It’s Sam McCready.”

He informed the Second Chief Directorate that his own people would take over the tail forthwith. Then gave his orders: “Twenty-four hours in twenty-four. If he makes a contact, pick them both up. If he makes a collection from a drop, pick him up. If he farts in the direction of Lenin’s mausoleum, pick him up.”

He put down the phone and read again the details from McCready’s passport. He was supposed to be an electronics expert from London via Helsinki, come to sweep the embassy for listening devices, a regular chore.

“But what the hell are you really doing here?” he asked the picture staring up from his desk.

In the embassy on the embankment, McCready, Gaunt, and Thornton dined alone. The ambassador was not much pleased to have three such guests, but the request had come from the Cabinet Office, and he was assured that the disruption would last for only twenty-four hours. So far as His Excellency was concerned, the sooner these dreadful spooks were gone, the better.

“I hope it works,” said Gaunt over the coffee. “The Russians are extremely good at playing chess.”

“True,” said McCready soberly. “Tomorrow we’ll find out how good they are at the three-card trick.”

AT PRECISELY FIVE MINUTES
to eight on a warm July morning, an unmarked Austin Montego sedan eased out of the gates of Britain’s Moscow embassy and drove across the bridge over the Moskva toward the center of the city.

According to the KGB report, Sam McCready was at the wheel, driving alone. Although his ginger wig and moustache were now impeccably in place, they were clearly visible to the watchers behind the windshields of their several cars. Telephoto-lens pictures were taken at the time, and several more were secured during the course of the day.

The British agent drove carefully through Moscow and out to the Park of Technological Achievement to the north of the city. On the way he made several attempts to shake any tail he may have had, but he failed. Nor did he even spot the tail. The KGB was using six cars, each intercutting with the other so that no single car was ever behind the Montego for more than a few hundred yards.

After entering the enormous park, the SIS man left his car and proceeded on foot. Two of the KGB vehicles remained on station close to the parked Montego. The crews of the other four descended and fanned out between the scientific exhibits until the Englishman was enveloped on all sides by an invisible screen.

He bought an ice cream and sat for much of the morning on a bench pretending to read a newspaper, frequently glancing at his watch as if waiting for someone to show up. No one did, except an old lady who asked him for the time. He showed her his watch without a word, she read the time, thanked him, and walked on.

She was promptly taken into custody, searched, and questioned. By the following morning, the KGB had satisfied themselves that she was an old lady who wanted to know the time. The ice cream seller was also detained.

Shortly after twelve, the agent from London took a packet of sandwiches from his pocket and slowly ate them. When he had finished he rose, dropped the wrapping paper into a waste basket, bought another ice cream, and sat down again.

The trash basket was kept under observation, but no one retrieved the wrappers until the park’s hygiene team arrived with their cart to empty the basket. The wrappers were taken by the KGB and subjected to intensive forensic analysis. Tests included those for invisible writing, microdots, and microfilm secreted between two layers of paper. Nothing was found. Traces were in evidence, however, of bread, butter, cucumber, and egg.

Long before this, just after one
P.M.,
the London agent had risen and left the park in his car. His first rendezvous had clearly aborted. He went, apparently to keep a second or backup rendezvous, to a hard-currency
beriozka
shop. Two KGB agents entered the shop and loitered among the shelves to see if the Englishman would deposit a message among the exclusive goods on offer there or pick one up. Had he made a purchase, he would have been arrested, as per orders, on the grounds that his purchase probably contained a message and that the shop was being used as a dead-letter box. But he made no purchases and was left alone.

On leaving the shop, he drove back to the British Embassy. Ten minutes later, he left again, now seated in the back of a Jaguar being driven by an embassy chauffeur. As the Jaguar left the city heading for the airport, the leader of the watcher team was patched straight through to General Kirpichenko.

“He is approaching the concourse now, Comrade General.”

“He has made no contact of any kind? Any kind at all?”

“No, Comrade General. Apart from the old lady and the ice cream seller—now both in custody—he has spoken to no one, nor has anyone spoken to him. His discarded newspaper and sandwich wrappers are in our possession. Otherwise, he has touched nothing.”

“It’s a mission-abort,” thought Kirpichenko. “He’ll be back. And we’ll be waiting.”

He knew that McCready, under the guise of a British Foreign Office technician, was carrying a diplomatic passport.

“Let him go,” he said. “Watch for a brush-pass inside the airport concourse. If there is none, see him through the departure lounge and into the aircraft.”

Later, the general would examine his team’s telephoto pictures of McCready in the Montego and at the park, call for a large microscope, look again, straighten up with a face pink with anger, and shout: “You stupid pricks, that’s not McCready.”

At ten past eight on the morning of the same day, a Jaguar driven by Barry Martins, the SIS Station Head in Moscow, left the embassy and drove sedately toward the old district of the Arbat where the streets are narrow and flanked by the elegant houses of long-gone prosperous merchants. A single Moskvitch took up the tail, but this was purely routine. The British referred to these KGB agents who followed them all over Moscow in one of life’s more boring chores as “the second eleven.” The Jaguar drove aimlessly around the Arbat. The man at the wheel occasionally pulled into the curb to consult a city map.

At twenty past eight a Mercedes sedan left the embassy. At the wheel, in a blue jacket and peaked cap, was an embassy chauffeur. No one looked in the rear, so no one saw another figure crouched low down near the floor and covered with a blanket. Another Moskvitch fell in behind.

Entering the Arbat district, the Mercedes passed the parked Jaguar. At this point Martins, still consulting his city map, made up his mind and swerved out from the curb, taking space between the Mercedes and the following Moskvitch. The convoy now constituted a Mercedes, a Jaguar, and two Moskvitches, all in line astern.

The Mercedes entered a narrow one-way street, followed by the Jaguar, which then developed engine trouble, coughed, spluttered, lurched, and came to a halt. The two Moskvitches piled up behind it, spilling out KGB agents. Martins flicked the hood release, climbed out, and raised the hood. He was at once surrounded by protesting men in leather jackets.

The Mercedes disappeared down the street and turned the corner. Amused Muscovites gathered on the narrow pavements to hear the Jaguar driver saying to the KGB team leader, “Now, look here, my good man. If you think you can make the bugger work, you go right ahead.”

Nothing entertains a Muscovite as much as the sight of the
chekisti
making a mess of things. One of the KGB men re-entered his car and got on the radio.

Clearing the Arbat, David Thornton, at the wheel of the Mercedes, took his guidance from Sam McCready, who emerged from his blanket and gave directions, without any disguise at all and looking precisely like himself.

Twenty minutes later, on a lonely road screened by trees in the middle of Gorki Park, the Mercedes halted. At the rear, McCready ripped off the CD plate, which was secured by a quick-release snaplock, and stuck a new license plate, prepared with strong adhesive on one side, over the British plate. Thornton did the same at the front. McCready retrieved Thornton’s makeup box from the trunk and climbed into the rear seat. Thornton swapped his hard blue peaked cap for a more Russian black leather cap and got back behind the wheel.

At eighteen minutes past nine, Colonel Nikolai Gorodov left his apartment in Shabolovsky Street on foot and began to walk toward Dzerdzinsky Square and the headquarters of the KGB. He looked haggard and pale; the reason soon appeared behind him. Two men emerged from a doorway and without a pretense of subtlety took station behind him.

He had gone two hundred yards when a black Mercedes drew to the curb beside him and kept pace. He heard the hiss of an electric window coming down, and a voice said in English, “Good morning, Colonel. Going my way?”

Gorodov stopped and stared. Framed in the window, shielded by the rear curtains from the two KGB men up the street, was Sam McCready. Gorodov was stunned, but not triumphant.

“That,” thought McCready, “is the look I wanted to see.”

Gorodov recovered and said loudly enough for the KGB ferrets to hear, “Thank you, Comrade. How kind.”

Then he entered the car, which sped away. The two KGB men paused for three seconds—and lost. The reason they paused was because the license plates of the Mercedes bore the letters
MOC
and then two figures.

The extremely exclusive MOC plates belong only to the members of the Central Committee, and it is a bold KGB footsoldier who dares stop or harass a Central Committee man. But they took the number and frantically used their hand communicators to tell the head office.

Martins had chosen well. The particular registration plates on that Mercedes belonged to a Politburo candidate member who happened to be in the Far East, somewhere near Khabarovsk. It took four hours to find him and learn that he had a Chaika, not a Mercedes, and that it was safely garaged in Moscow. By then it was too late; the Mercedes was back in its British Embassy livery, the Union Jack jauntily fluttering from its pennant-staff.

Gorodov leaned back in the seat, his bridges now completely burned behind him.

“If you are a long-term Soviet mole, I am dead,” remarked McCready.

Gorodov considered this. “And if
you
are a long-term Soviet mole,” he replied, “then
I
am dead.”

“Why did you return?” asked McCready.

“As it turned out, a mistake,” said Gorodov. “I had promised you something, and I found I could not discover it in London. When I give my word, I like to keep it. Then Moscow summoned me back for urgent consultations. To disobey would have meant coming over to the West immediately. No excuse would have been accepted for my not returning. I thought I could come for one week, find out what I needed, and be allowed to return to London. Only when I got here did I learn that it was too late. I was under deep suspicion, my apartment and office bugged, followed everywhere, forbidden to go out to Yazenevo, confined to meaningless work in Moscow Center. By the way, I have something for you.”