He stood before a buffet table and raised a Scotch and soda to Karl Richter, “Karl, let’s drink to the old days.” Richter looked at Grigor and wanted to cry. His double life was surely going to envelop and crush him someday, but the man was remarkably composed and almost fatalistic in his acceptance. Richter drank to the old days.
Richter went to London and then to Washington, where he became second in command at State Department Intelligence. Always he handled Rudenko’s material, which by now centered on Soviet missile production and silos. The data helped American planning for defense all during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon years. Anthony Carter and others delivered back to Rudenko letters from his parents in Philadelphia and notes from Richter, who used the code name Haverford in case the papers fell into the wrong hands. The contact man said that Rudenko appeared in the best of health. His spirits were always good. Only two weeks before, when Grigor had dropped a container of microfilm at a trade fair in Moscow, he had appeared jovial and unconcerned. And yet, he had now sought out a stranger, John Brandon, within the past twenty-four hours and entrusted him with something for Washington. Richter was deeply concerned for his friend.
At 11:10 A.M. on that Tuesday morning, Richter’s messenger at the airport called once more to say that John Brandon had not emerged from the shuttle plane.
Richter went into action. He called the Chatham Hotel in New York and asked to be connected to John Brandon’s room. The phone rang ten times. Richter told the operator to send someone up there quickly to find out if Brandon was ill.
The bell captain found John Brandon in bed, facing the television set showing a Charlie Chaplin comedy. The bell captain said, “I’m sorry to intrude, sir, but a friend of yours…” Then the bell captain stopped talking, for he had seen Brandon’s eyes, fixed unwaveringly on the picture screen. They never blinked. The bell captain went to the phone and asked the operator to let him speak to Richter. He said, “I’m sorry to tell you this, sir, but Mr. Brandon seems to have passed away during his sleep.”
Karl Richter was not terribly surprised. He ordered the hotel manager to hold the body for a police autopsy, then spoke to FBI headquarters in New York and told the bureau chief to search the room immediately for a manila envelope among Brandon’s personal effects.
Karl Richter waited beside his phone. He drank another container of coffee. He contacted the traffic department in the basement of the building and asked them to cable the American Embassy in Moscow for information on the whereabouts of Grigor Rudenko. He cautioned the embassy to be extremely discreet in its inquiry since Rudenko might be under surveillance or worse. Richter told the clerk to use the Croesus code in relaying the message to Moscow. Later, after reading two urgent reports, he ate a sandwich at his desk.
Finally, the phone rang. The FBI reported that after a careful search, they had found no manila envelope in John Brandon’s room. Richter was now certain that the messenger from Moscow had not died from a heart attack. He told the FBI to look for death by “unnatural means” and to stay with the coroner until something definite emerged from the autopsy.
Richter went to the elevator and down into the basement garage at the State Department. He drove his car up the ramp and into the early afternoon stream of traffic heading past the Lincoln Memorial and across the bridge into Virginia. Ahead lay the hill where John and Robert Kennedy lay at rest. The late summer foliage wrapped the hillside in lush warmth. Tourists formed a line around the memorial to the assassinated President. Richter watched the antlike column of mourners idly as he swung the car off the bridge and onto the road leading into the country and the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency fifteen miles away in Langley. He found himself thinking of those terrible days in the fall of 1962 when the Kennedy brothers had confronted the Russians over Cuba and won the “eyeball to eyeball” duel. Richter shuddered slightly as he remembered the unbelievable tension of those hours. It had been too close a thing to romanticize the affair even now. And still, the cold war went on. Richter thought of Grigor sadly as he drove along the highway toward the agency.
On the second floor of that sprawling main building which housed the men and apparatus that monitored enemy intentions, someone else was remembering the days of the missile crisis with the same feelings of subdued horror. In his walnut-paneled office, Director Samuel T. Riordan had wheeled his chair around to the window and tilted it back with his feet propped up against the pane. He drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair as he looked out at the rolling hills surrounding his domain. Riordan was uneasy. Years of training in the intelligence business had honed his instincts for danger to a high degree of sophistication. Riordan’s instincts were now working overtime. Something was wrong in the world, and the director felt it strongly. In his lap lay pieces of the puzzle, reports from agents and data from evesdropping devices which clearly indicated an extraordinary turn of events somewhere in the world. Riordan was nagged by the similarity of this situation to the Cuban crisis when the constant filtering of bits and pieces of data pointed to a highly irregular activity on the part of the enemy. Only at the last moment had the pieces fitted together and enabled the President of the United States to counter the threat.
Samuel Riordan was suffering the same dreadful reactions on this lovely September day. He turned wearily back to his desk and sorted out the information one more time.
Item:
From Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet:
Flotilla of twenty-two Soviet naval warships including four Polaris-type missile carriers passing south of Newfoundland, bearing southwest at twenty-four knots. Complete radio silence being observed. Being shadowed by units of Allied fleet in area. Probable destination unknown at this time. Present speed and course if maintained suggests rendezvous off Virginia coastline with large fleet of Soviet trawlers presently in area.
Item:
CIA, HQ, Frankfort, Larsen:
Seven Soviet diplomats, including ambassadors to Belgium, France, West Germany, and Yugoslavia, have within past forty-eight hours, emplaned for Moscow. No explanation of departure. Also KGB activity in Western Europe appears in state of flux. Resident agent in Bonn has not been seen in his usual cover as press officer at embassy for ten days… supposed to have the flu… What do you have from your end on all this?…
Item:
MOSCOW, Sept. 5 (Reuters) — Premier Valerian Smirnov was reliably reported today to have gone into the hospital for tests to determine the cause of a persistent stomach disorder. Bulletins will be issued by the Soviet government at periodic stages of the medical diagnosis.
Item:
Norad to Langley, August 10, 3 P.M.
Soviet space base at Baikonur has fired six satellites into orbit within three-day period. Each satellite contained eight-in-one packages now distributed in a global arc seven hundred miles high. Chain of satellites grapefruit-sized. Assume navigational aids for Soviets but no confirmation.
Item:
To Riordan from Nichols, Director National Security Agency:
On August 14 and 22, Midas infrared detection satellites recorded intense heat emissions of fourteen to eighteen seconds duration emitted from a position in area north of Tashkent and also region fifty miles east of Vorkuta just north of Arctic Circle. No hydrogen tests possible since other detection apparatus failed to give corroborative signals.
Item:
HAVANA, Sept. 7 (AP)—
A delegation of Soviet generals and other officials landed today in Havana to pay a courtesy visit to Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban people. They are expected to stay approximately ten days before journeying on to Algeria on the last leg of their goodwill trip to friendly nations.