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“Proposals accepted and agreed,” said Edwards. “We back our judgment that Keepsake is telling the truth and that the Americans have themselves a disinformation agent. That said, the problem is that whatever Orlov is here for, we don’t know yet. It seems that for the moment he is producing good product, which makes it unlikely our Cousins would believe us—the more so as the Chief agrees that we cannot reveal the existence, let alone the identity, of Keepsake. So how do you suggest we handle it?”
“Let me have him,” said McCready. “We have right of access. We can ask questions. Joe Roth is in charge, and I know Joe. He’s no fool. Maybe I can push Orlov, push him hard, before Roth cries ‘Enough.’ Sow some seeds of doubt. Get the Cousins to begin to contemplate the notion that he may not be all he seems.”
“All right,” said Edwards. “You take it.”
He made it sound like his own decision, his own act of magnanimity. The reality of his lunch with the Chief, who would be retiring at the end of the year, had been quite different. The ambitious Assistant Chief, who prided himself on his excellent personal relationship with the CIA, had in mind that one day Langley’s approval of him could be a useful aid to his appointment as Chief.
During the lunch, Edwards had proposed a far less skilled but less abrasive debriefer than Sam McCready to handle the matter of Keepsake’s embarrassing denunciation of the CIA’s new treasure. He had been overruled. Sir Christopher, a former colleague in the field, had insisted that the Deceiver whom he had himself appointed be in charge of handling Orlov.
McCready set off for Alconbury by car early the following morning. Denis Gaunt drove. Edwards had cleared McCready’s request that Gaunt sit in on the interrogation of the Russian. In the back of the car sat a woman from MI-5. The Security Service had asked urgently that they too have someone at the meetings with the Russian, since a specific line of questioning would cover the area of Soviet agents working in and against Britain. Alice Daltry was in her early thirties, pretty, and very bright. She still seemed rather overawed by McCready. In their tight, closed world, despite the need-to-know principle, word had leaked of the previous year’s Pankratin affair.
The car also contained a secure telephone. Looking like an ordinary car phone but larger, it could be switched to encrypted mode to communicate with London. There might well be points emerging from the talk with Orlov that would need to be checked with London.
For much of the journey McCready sat silently, staring through the windshield at the unfolding countryside in the early morning, marveling again at the beauty of England in the spring.
He ran his mind back over what Keepsake had told him. In London, according to the Russian, he had been marginally associated years earlier with the first preparatory stages for a deception operation of which Orlov could only be the final fruition. It had been code-named Project Potemkin.
An ironic title, thought McCready, a hint of KGB gallows humor. It almost certainly had been named not after the battleship Potemkin—nor even after Marshal Potemkin, whose name had been bestowed on the battleship—but after the Potemkin Villages.
Years ago, the Empress Catherine the Great, as ruthless a dictator as long-suffering Russia had ever endured, visited the newly conquered Crimea. Fearful of letting her see the shivering, huddled masses in their freezing shacks, her chief minister, Potemkin, had sent carpenters, plasterers, and painters ahead of her route to construct and paint handsome facades of clean, sturdy cottages with smiling, waving peasants in the windows. The shortsighted old queen was delighted by the picture of rural bliss and returned to her palace. Later, laborers dismantled the facades to reveal again the miserable shantytowns behind them. These deceptions were called Potemkin Villages.
“The target is the CIA,” Keepsake had said. He did not know who the exact victim would be or how the sting would be accomplished. The project was not then being handled directly by his department, which had been asked only for peripheral assistance.
“But this has to be Potemkin coming into operation at last,” he had said. “The proof will be in two parts. No information provided by Orlov will ever actually produce massive and irreversible damage to Soviet interests. Second, you will see an enormous loss of morale taking place inside the CIA.”
At the moment, the latter was certainly not the case, mused McCready. Recovering from the undoubted embarrassment of the Urchenko affair, his American friends were riding high, largely due to their newfound asset. He determined to concentrate on the other area.
At the main gate of the air base, McCready offered an identification card (not in his real name) and asked for Joe Roth on a certain phone extension. Minutes later, Roth appeared in an Air Force jeep.
“Sam, good to see you again.”
“Nice to see you back, Joe. That was quite a vacation you took.”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I was given no choice, no chance to explain. It was a question of take the guy and run, or throw him back.”
“That’s okay,” said McCready easily. “All has been explained. All is smoothed over. Let me present my two colleagues.”
Roth reached into the car and shook hands with Gaunt and Daltry. He was relaxed and effusive. He foresaw no problems and was glad the Brits would be sharing in the goodies. He cleared the whole party with the Guard Commander, and they drove in line across the base to the isolated block where the CIA team was housed.
Like many service buildings, it was no architectural gem, but it was functional. A single corridor divided its entire length, from which doors led off to sleeping rooms, an eating room, k
itchens, toilets, and conference rooms. A dozen Air Force police ringed the building, guns visible.
McCready glanced around before entering. He noted that while he and his two colleagues had excited no attention, many of the USAF personnel passing by stared curiously at the circle of armed guards.
“All they’ve managed to do,” he muttered to Gaunt, “is identify the bloody place to any KGB team with a set of binoculars.”
Roth led them to a room in the center of the block. Its windows were closed and shuttered; the only illumination was electric. Easy chairs formed a comfortable group around a coffee table in the center of the room; straight chairs and tables ringed the walls, for the note-takers.
Roth genially gestured to the British party to take the easy chairs and ordered some coffee.
“I’ll go get Minstrel,” he said, “unless you guys want to shoot the breeze first.”
McCready shook his head. “Might as well get on with it, Joe.”
When Roth was out, McCready nodded to Gaunt and Daltry to take chairs by the wall. The message was: Watch and listen, miss nothing. Joe Roth had left the door open. From down the corridor, McCready heard the haunting melody of “Bridge over Troubled Waters.” The sound stopped as someone switched off the tape deck. Then Roth was back. He ushered into the room a chunky, tough-looking man in running shoes, slacks, and a polo sweater.
“Sam, let me present Colonel Pyotr Orlov. Peter, this is Sam McCready.”
