Good!
"Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and I are friends from childhood," Murov said. "And we went to Saint Petersburg University together."
"And Berezovsky is…?"
"The former commercial attache of our embassy in Berlin."
"Read rezident?"
Whelan had asked the question to annoy Murov and was genuinely surprised when Murov replied: "All right, the former rezident in Berlin. And I was therefore genuinely surprised when word came that he and his sister, who was the rezident in Copenhagen, had deserted their posts shortly before they were to be arrested on charges of embezzlement."
"This letter," Whelan said, tapping the document with his fingers, "says they didn't do it. 'Come home. All is forgiven.'"
"They didn't do it. Svetlana's husband was trying to pay her back for leaving him. In the SVR, husbands are expected to control their wives; if they can't, it puts their character into question."
"Are you pulling my leg, Sergei?"
"Not in the slightest. Svetlana-"
"You keep using her first name. You know her, too, huh?"
"Very well. As I was saying, Svetlana not only moved out of their apartment, but had begun divorce proceedings against Colonel Alekseev. Having one's wife-particularly a wife who is a co-worker, so to speak-find one wanting in the marital situation is very damaging to an officer's career. Evgeny's father was a general-"
"Evgeny's the husband?"
Murov nodded and said, "Colonel Evgeny Evgenyvich Alekseev. And Evgeny wanted to be a general, too. And I would suppose there was a human element in here as well."
"Human element?"
"Aside from everything else, his losing Svetlana. She's a strikingly beautiful woman. Charming, elegant. Evgeny was crazy about her. Jealous."
"Does the term 'soap opera' mean anything to you, Sergei?"
"I know what a soap opera is, of course."
"This sounds like a soap opera. A bad one."
Murov sucked in his breath audibly. And then he was spared having to reply immediately by the waiter.
"Excuse me," the waiter interrupted. "Are you ready to order, gentlemen?"
He was pushing a cart loaded with steaks, chops, lobster, and other items from which one could select one's steak, chop, lobster, or other item.
Whelan seriously doubted one actually got what one selected. For one thing, all the cuts were lying on a bed of ice, and were therefore presumably below room temperature, and you weren't supposed to grill steaks unless they were at room temperature. For another, it was reasonable to assume the diner would pick the best chunk of meat. If this then went to the grill, another good-looking steak would have to be added to the cart.
It would therefore be easier to let the customer think he was selecting his entree, and actually serve him with something from the kitchen, and he was sure they did just that.
"Filet mignon, pink in the middle, with Wine Merchant's sauce, asparagus, and a small salad, please," Whelan ordered without looking at the selection on the cart.
"Twice, except because of the big portions I'll have mushrooms instead of asparagus," Murov said, then looked at Whelan, and said, "We can rob from one another's side dish," then turned back to the waiter, and added, "And bring another bottle of the Egri Bikaver."
The waiter repeated the order and then left.
"You will recall I used the phrase 'touches on the incredible,'" Murov said, "when we began."
"That was an understatement, but go on," Whelan said. "What happened?"
"Well, all of this apparently pushed him over the edge. He decided to punish her. Or maybe he did what he did consciously, thinking that losing a wife who was a thief would be less damaging to his career than a wife who had kicked him out of the marital bed. So he started to set up her and her brother on false embezzlement charges."
"Sounds like he's a really nice guy," Whelan said.
Murov exhaled audibly again.
"One does not get to be the Berlin rezident of the SVR without a very well-developed sense of how to cover one's back," Murov said.
"I suppose that would also apply to the Washington rezident of the SVR."
Murov ignored the comment. He went on: "Dmitri learned what was going on…"
"Why didn't he go to his boss and say, 'Hey, boss. My sister's husband is trying to set me up. Here's the proof.'"
"Because his boss was his cousin, Colonel V. N. Solomatin. I'm sure Vladlen would have believed him, but Solomatin's superior was-is-General Yakov Sirinov, who runs the SVR for Putin. And Sirinov was unlikely to believe either Vladlen or Dmitri for several reasons, high among them that he believed Dmitri was a personal threat to his own career. The gossip at the time Sirinov was given his position was that it would have gone to Dmitri if Dmitri and Putin had not been at odds. And also of course because Vladlen and Dmitri were cousins."
The odds are a hundred to one that I am being fed an incredible line of bullshit.
But, my God, what a plethora of details! Murov should have been a novelist.
Either that, or he's telling me the truth.
Careful, Harry! Not for publication, but you're really out of your league when dealing with the Washington rezident of the SVR.
"So Dmitri did what any man in his position would do."
"The SVR Washington rezident, for example?"
Murov looked at him, shook his head, smiled, and said, "No. What the Washington rezident would have done in similar circumstances would have been to call Frank Lammelle, and say something like, 'Frank, my friend, when I come out of Morton's tonight, have a car waiting for me. This spy's coming in from the cold.'
"Dmitri didn't have that option. He was in Berlin. His sister was in Copenhagen. And they were being watched by other SVR officers. They couldn't just get on a plane and come here. But what they could do, and did, was contact the CIA station chief in Vienna and tell her that they were willing to defect, and thought the best time and way to do that was to slip away from the festivities at the Kunsthistorisches Museum."
"I don't understand," Whelan confessed. "What festivities? Where?"
"There was going to be a gathering in Vienna of rezidents and other SVR officers. As a gesture of international friendship, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg sent Bartolomeo Rastrelli's wax statue of Russian tsar Peter the First on a tour of the better European museums. First stop was Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum."
"Okay."
"The CIA station chief set things up. The CIA sent a plane to Vienna with the plan that, as soon as Dmitri and Svetlana got into it, it would take off, and eight hours later Dmitri and Svetlana would be in one of those safe houses the agency maintains not far from our dacha on the Eastern Shore here.
"So far as General Sirinov was concerned, the business at the Kunsthistorisches Museum was going to provide him with two things. First, an opportunity to get all his people together without attracting too much attention. Second, when everybody was gathered, and people asked the whereabouts of Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva, Sirinov was going to tell them they were under arrest for embezzling funds of the Russian Federation, and then put them on an Aeroflot aircraft to Moscow."
"Sirinov… is that his name?"
Murov nodded.
"He knew these two were going to defect?"
Murov nodded.
"And here is where the plot thickens," Murov said. "There were CIA agents waiting in Vienna's Westbahnhof for Dmitri and his sister. And there were representatives of the SVR waiting for them. And they never showed up."
"What happened to them?"
"It took General Sirinov several days to find out. There were two problems. First, the officer responsible for meeting them at the railway station, the Vienna rezident, Lieutenant Colonel Kiril Demidov, was found the next morning sitting in a taxicab outside the American embassy with the calling card of Miss Eleanor Dillworth, the CIA station chief, on his chest. Poor Kiril had been garroted to death."
"Jesus Christ!" Whelan exclaimed.