Churcher imagined what it would be like on the streets of Washington, D.C., that night, and shivered.
A click signaled the phone connection had been made. Two rings followed, but no electronic beep to indicate the call was being taped, though Churcher knew it was. A woman’s voice came on the line.
“Good evening,” she answered in a proper British accent. “This is the Embassy of the Soviet Socialist Republics. How may I help you?”
About an hour later in Havana, GRU agent Valery Gorodin was in his office in the Soviet Embassy on Calle Guevara doing paperwork. Perspiration rolled down his neck and filled the creases of his brow. The stifling hot room had once been a Castro torture chamber, and Gorodin had no doubt information was literally sweated out of the victims.
Gorodin had been an outstanding foreign language student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in the late fifties, before it became an elitist institution. While at MIGMO, Gorodin, the son of a train yard worker from Kazan, fraternized with the privileged off-spring of those in nomenklatura, and developed a driving ambition to join the elite class, comprised of those who hold important positions in party and government. Indeed, doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, and architects are excluded by the Politburo and Central Committee who confer membership. Those so blessed enjoy pampered life-styles: choice apartments, country dachas, chauffeured cars, gourmet foodstuffs, freedom to travel, and VIP accommodations.
Gorodin knew that his gift — rapid fluency in any tongue: Arabic, English, French, German, Spanish, among them — was his entrée. Recruitment by the KGB upon graduation from MIGMO, the first step. He was excited at the prospect of joining the “Service” and about to accept their offer when Colonel Yuri Pashkov, the GRU recruiter, caused him to reconsider.
“GRU is the main intelligence branch of the Soviet General Staff,” Pashkov explained as they dined on hearty Russian fare at Lastochka, a restaurant on a barge moored in the Moskva near the Krimsky bridge, opposite Gorky Park. “Our mandate comes from the military. Strategic intelligence, the key to the Supreme Soviet’s future, is our focus. You see,” Pashkov went on with a quiet confidence that appealed to Gorodin, “despite appearances, KGB are essentially — policemen. Their primary role is internal security, not foreign intelligence. Oh, they get headlines, but the most meaningful global tasks are charged to us, to GRU. And an agent so assigned has international mobility unlike KGB, who, if fortunate enough to be posted abroad, is restricted to his assigned country. GRU is a grand tradition, Valery,” Pashkov concluded, “an elite coterie of the motherland’s best and brightest. Strength of character is our trademark. Pride in anonymity our reward.”
Gorodin was eager and conscientious when GRU assigned him to Cuba. It was the cutting edge of Soviet foreign policy, the place where SLOW BURN had just been initiated; and during installation of the “missile base,” on-site security — assuring that the grand deception wasn’t compromised — was his task. But that was many years ago, and the once promising career path had proved a dead end. Lately, he spent his time forwarding payments from the Kremlin to a SLOW BURN collaborator, and filing sektor memoranda with GRU Headquarters — Military Department 44388.
He was at his desk preparing the monthly report when his KGB assistant entered. Aleksandr Beyalev — or the schpick, as Gorodin called him, using derogatory terminology for novice — was delivering a cable.
“From Washington, comrade,” he announced a little too crisply. “Top secret.”
Gorodin read the cable, and winced. “Churcher wants a meeting?” he wondered aloud. “We just had a meeting.” Then feigning further confusion, he held the cable out to Beyalev, indicating the paragraph. “What do you make of this part here — about Deschin?”
Beyalev’s narrow face soured as Gorodin knew it would. The zealous fellow made no effort to hide his contempt. Soon he would outshine his paunchy burned-out boss, and take charge. He had no idea he was the key to Gorodin’s plan to get out of Cuba.
Indeed, thoughts of nomenklatura had dimmed, but not died. Though the two agencies were unfriendly rivals, and separate Embassy rezidenturas the rule, facilities and personnel were often shared in smaller embassies such as Cuba. And Gorodin had slyly feigned a willingness to collaborate, and petitioned the KGB rezident, the ranking intelligence officer, for an assistant who would “show him up,” and be mercifully ordered to take over. The ire of his superiors and the harsh Soviet winters were worth chancing, Gorodin thought. Nothing could be worse than spending the rest of his career with soaking wet armpits; his ass stuck to the vinyl cushion of his desk chair.
“I’d say the part about Deschin means exactly what it says,” Beyalev responded dryly. “Churcher is insisting Comrade Deschin attend the meeting.”
Gorodin pulled a crinkled cigar from a box on his desk. He pushed it between his lips, and lit it, all the while eyeing the standard issue 9mm Kalishnikov in Beyalev’s sweat-stained shoulder holster. Gorodin inhaled deeply, trying to remember in which desk drawer was his own. “I can’t tell the minister of culture he must be here in eight hours for a meeting, the reason for which I haven’t the slightest clue,” he said.
Smoke came in a steady stream from his nose and mouth as he spoke, creating a hazy cloud between them.
Beyalev waved it away impatiently. “He couldn’t make it in time, anyway,” he said in a tone that implied he was enumerating the obvious. “It’s six fifteen A.M. in Moscow. Next flight departs at noon. Flight time twelve and one quarter hours. ETA Havana four thirty P.M. tomorrow afternoon. That means—”
“Forget Aeroflot,” Gorodin interrupted. He abhorred the staccato parroting of data at which Beyalev was expert. “The minister of culture doesn’t fly Aeroflot. He has all the aircraft of the Supreme Soviet at his disposal. Supersonic fighters. SSTs! I’d think I wouldn’t have to remind you of that.”
Beyalev emitted two scratchy sounds that were intended to be an emphatic rejoinder. He cleared his throat and started over in a stronger voice. “Well, if the minister departed within the next two hours on an SST, he could make it in time — if need be.”
“Well, perhaps you’d be big enough to let him decide that,” Gorodin cracked with a wiley smile.
Beyalev nodded blankly, wondering how he had lost the offensive.
“You do think this should be decided in Moscow, comrade?” Gorodin prodded.
Beyalev swallowed in embarrassment; his pronounced Adam’s apple was still bobbing when Gorodin fired the coup de grace.
“You do recall how to contact Moscow?”
Beyalev nodded and hurried from the office.
Gorodin’s smile broadened and gave birth to a chuckle that ended suddenly. Deschin — what does Churcher want with him? he wondered.
Sarah Winslow had slept through the afternoon, awakening after night-fall. The photograph had come slowly into focus when her eyes opened, and she had been staring at it for a while now.
A group of young men and women, most in U.S. Army fatigues, smiled back at her. They stood in front of a World War II jeep. The Red Cross emblem painted on the side was repeated on their arm bands and on the tents in rows behind them. Sarah, second from the right, appeared to be leaning against a crease where the picture had once been folded, cracking the emulsion. Her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows. A stethoscope hung from her neck. Her face glowed with goodness and clearness of purpose; the face that greeted many wounded GIs whose eyes flickered to life in the field hospital near San Gimignano, an ancient walled city just south of Florence in central Italy.