‘But I must digress for a moment from Sudhoff to look at the organisation you and your father were assigned to, Anna, Directorate “S”. As well as your job, darling Anna, training subversives- nelegali-to engage in terrorist activities in their own countries, Directorate “S” was actually charged with a far more important role. That role was no less than the preservation of the KGB itself. When Gorbachev was President and before the Wall came down, Directorate “S” was assigned to hold the Soviet state together through the organs of the security services; to put the KGB on ice.
‘Independent groups of senior officers in Directorate “S” set about preserving the clan loyalties that ran deeper than any loyalty to Communist cliques or even to the Politburo. In fact, one of the main aims of Directorate “S” in these years was to sweep these fusty, inefficient Communist cliques aside, right up to the Politburo itself.
‘Directorate “S” operated with a cell structure, an underground formation, with no centralised control. Central control would have been too risky. Look at what happened in 1991. Kryuchkov and his other KGB associates staged their disastrous putsch against Gorbachev for control of the Kremlin and nearly ruined all the plans Directorate “S” had so carefully laid. It was its cell structure which ensured its preservation. The putsch was a setback for those who knew what the deeper, longer plan was. The Plan. Directorate “S” was playing a far longer game than Kryuchkov and the rest of his dreamers realised.
‘When Yeltsin stood on his tank in 1991 and the putsch was defeated, the Plan was disrupted by a chain of events that began with the coup Yeltsin overthrew. The cell structure buried itself still deeper, and waited. Yeltsin could have destroyed the structure by unmasking all Russia’s operatives and all its illegals in the West. But he was afraid to do that, and who can blame him? Yeltsin, however, the one hope for democracy, did gain the upper hand for a while, and the Plan was postponed.
‘So their organisation became even tighter. And then slowly, as Yeltsin weakened, these disparate cells began to join together, firstly through the KGB’s reconquest of the Ministry of Defence and then, as Putin’s power grew at the end of the nineties, through other ministries. Shebarshin and Drozdov helped the movement gather strength and to coordinate itself. Then Leonov promoted Sergei Ivanov to Minister of Defence. Once Ivanov became a minister and Putin became head of the KGB, the wagon began to roll at last. As you know, they called themselves- call themselves–“The Patriots”.
‘But Directorate “S” was the core, always the core. In the hard times, it was Directorate “S” whose access to vast numbers of illegals abroad–as well as hard cash–held the movement together. In 1991, Directorate “S” was, in effect, a separate country within Russia, funded by the new businessmen they controlled, and by Russians in the West. But they were also funded with even greater quantities of cash by the illegals who were already in positions of great financial power–in private banks and private companies in the West–men like Otto Roth.
‘Directorate “S” was integrated on an international level, like any independent country. There are thousands of you out there, Anna. Like you, they have the best education, years of experience in the field. Each officer has up to a dozen illegals at his disposal somewhere abroad; operatives who are self-sufficient and who pay back when told to pay back.
‘And they worked in cells, just as they did when it all began before the Revolution, before Lenin returned to Russia in 1917, the year Kokoschka, as it happens, took up his professorship in Dresden. These cells were in the same mould the KGB has always favoured. Even completely cut off from the KGB body, deprived of state financing, left out in the cold, the structure would still survive and prosper.
‘And Ivanov and Putin, and the others Putin gathered around him, they knew this—they were, of course, part of it—and when they took power they began to fold Directorate “S” and all its hundreds of cells back into the mixing bowl of Russian politics like cream into a soufflé. They owed their positions of power to Directorate “S” and Directorate “S”, like some precious Holy Grail buried during the dark years of democracy, was ready to change the world when it re-emerged.
‘And so, slowly, from 1991, the Patriots have built the economic structures they needed; they have suborned the notionally independent businesses that came to power under Yeltsin, and they have brought the various mafias in under their wing, killing those crime bosses who opposed them. It is the biggest nationalisation of mafia and gangster groups in history.
‘And with all these methods, the Patriots have created an overarching state super-business that controls half the world’s energy supplies. The state’s energy supplier, Gazprom, the largest company in the world, is of course at its head. And the Patriots have elided the guiding hand of the Communist Party out of existence, out of history. The Patriots sit at the head of this new economic machine they have created.’
I get up and put the kettle on the stove but I forget to fill it with water. Then I catch myself and take it off and hold it under the tap until it’s full. I leave the tap on and wash my face with my hands while the kettle heats and I can try to think. Who is Mikhail? Where is Finn?
I make tea, with a lot of sugar, and sit down at the kitchen table, stirring the tea while I look at how Finn continues.
‘Mikhail is very senior in Directorate “S”, Anna. In fact, he is one of the few who knew the structure well enough to bring it all together when the time was right. It was Mikhail who, behind the scenes, raised Putin from being Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg to becoming head of the KGB, then prime minister, before finally helping to elevate him to the presidency.’
I feel Finn pausing for thought, or perhaps to pour himself a drink, or simply to walk away from what he’s writing and to gaze through a window. But his words continue on the page without pause.
‘And so, back to Sudhoff. Whatever body was found in the canal in Berlin, it wasn’t the body of Sudhoff. Sudhoff- his working name in East Germany- was someone else before Sudhoff, and someone else after Sudhoff. He’s been with Putin right from the beginning, long before they “met” for the first time in East Germany. And he was with Putin afterwards. Mikhail is Sudhoff. Codename Mikhail is also codename Sudhoff. He was with Putin in St Petersburg when Putin worked under the mayor, Anatoly Sobchak. He was there when Sobchak met his mysterious death. He came with Putin to Moscow and, I hope with all my heart, he is still with Putin now. I hope his wife still lunches with Lyudmilla Putin. I hope this because Mikhail is one of very, very few hopes we have in the West of seeing what Russia has become and what it will grow to be.’
I can almost feel Finn’s pen pause in mid-air.
‘I can tell you that Mikhail has seen this monster he has helped to create. And he doesn’t like what he sees. If the Plan succeeds, and Mikhail remains undetected, his statue will probably be outside the Lubyanka one day. But Mikhail is working to stop it and he cannot survive for long.
‘And if the Plan does not succeed, it will be because Mikhail has tried to alert the world to what he helped create. He is, you might say, a pivotal figure in history, as great a double agent as there has ever been.’
There the writing abruptly ends.
I sit back in the chair, frustrated. He’s dangled a lure, but he hasn’t told me what I want to know. He hasn’t given me the fish.
I tear the little notebook into pieces and burn them one by one in the fireplace. Then I put on my coat. I exit through the back of the house on the lake side, and I walk until darkness falls.
What game is Finn playing? He’s explained Mikhail to me under yet another codename, Sudhoff. Why? Why doesn’t he give me his real name? So his wife lunches with Putin’s wife, but that doesn’t narrow it down much further than Patrushev had already narrowed it down in 2000.