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“I believe in Vietnam in ’68 or ’69.”
“Believe?”
“No, I know it was Vietnam. I was with Planning, and we had a big operation down there, mainly in and around Saigon. Locally recruited help was Vietnamese, of course, Viet Cong; but we had our own people. One of them reported that the Viet Cong had brought him an American who was dissatisfied. Our local Rezident cultivated the man and turned him. In late 1969 General Drozdov personally went to Tokyo to talk with the American. That was when he was code-named Sparrowhawk.”
“How do you know this?”
“There were arrangements to be made, communication links set up, funds to be transferred. I was in charge.”
They talked for a full week. Orlov recalled banks into which sums had been paid over the years, and the months (if not the actual days) on which these transfers were made. The sums increased as the years passed, probably to account for promotion and better product.
“When I moved to the Illegals Directorate and came directly under Drozdov, my association with Case Sparrowhawk continued. But I was not now concerned with bank transfers. It was more operational. If Sparrowhawk gave us an agent working against us, I would inform the appropriate department, usually Executive Action—known as ‘wet affairs’—and they would liquidate the hostile agent if he was out of our territory or pick him up if he was inside. We got four anti-Castro Cubans that way.”
Max Kellogg noted everything and reran his tapes through the night. Finally he said to Roth, “There is only one career that fits all these allegations. I don’t know whose it is, but the records will prove it. It’s a question of cross-checking now. Hours and hours of cross-checking. I can only do that in Washington, in the Central Registry. I have to go back.”
He flew the following day, spent five hours with the DCI in his Georgetown mansion, then closeted himself with the records. He had carte blanche, on the personal orders of the DCI. No one dared deny Kellogg anything. Despite the secrecy, word began to spread through Langley. Something was up. There was a flap going on, and it had to do with internal security. Morale began to flag. These things can never be kept truly quiet.
At Golders Hill in North London there is a small park, an adjunct to the much larger Hampstead Heath, that contains a menagerie of deer, goats, ducks, and other wildfowl. McCready met Keepsake there on the day Max Kellogg flew back to Washington.
“Things are not so good at the embassy,” said Keepsake. “The K-Line man, on orders from Moscow, has started asking for files that go back years. I think a security investigation, probably of all our embassies in Western Europe, has been started. Sooner or later, it will narrow to the London embassy.”
“Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Possibly.”
“Suggest it,” said McCready.
“It would help if I could give them something really useful—some good news about Orlov, for example.”
When a defector-in-place like Keepsake changes sides, it would be suspicious if he produced no information for the Russians year after year. So it is customary for his new masters to give him some genuine intelligence
to send home to prove what a fine fellow he is.
Keepsake had already given McCready the name of every real Soviet agent in Britain that he knew about, which was most of them. The British had clearly not picked them all up—that would have given the game away. Some had been shifted away from classified material, not in an obvious manner but slowly, in the course of “administrative” changes. Some had been promoted in rank but been moved out of the handling of secret matters. Some had had the material crossing their desks doctored so that it would do more harm than good.
Keepsake had even been allowed to recruit a few new agents to prove his worth to Moscow. One of these was a clerk in the Central Registry of the SIS itself, a man utterly loyal to Britain but who would pass on what he was told. Moscow had been quite delighted by the recruitment of Agent Wolverine. It was agreed that two days later, Wolverine would pass to Keepsake a copy of a draft memorandum in Denis Gaunt’s hand to the effect that Orlov was now ensconced at Alconbury, where the Americans had fallen for him hook, line, and sinker—and so had the British.
“How are things with Orlov?” inquired Keepsake.
“Everything has gone quiet,” said McCready. “I had one half-day with him, got nowhere. I think I sowed some seeds of doubt in Joe Roth’s mind, there and in London. He went back to Alconbury, talked again with Orlov, then shot off back to the States on a different passport. He thought we hadn’t spotted him. Seemed in a hell of a hurry. Hasn’t reappeared—at least, not through a regular airport. May have flown direct into Alconbury on a military flight.”
Keepsake stopped tossing crumbs to the ducks and turned to McCready. “They have talked to you since, invited you back to resume?”
“No. It’s been a week. Total silence.”
“Then he has produced the Big Lie, the one he came to produce. That is why the CIA is involved within themselves.”
“Any idea what it could be?”
Keepsake sighed. “If I were General Drozdov, I would think like a KGB man. There are two things the KGB has always lusted after. One is to start a major war between the CIA and the SIS. Have they started fighting you?”
“No, they are being very polite. Just noncommunicative.”
“Then it is the other. The other dream is to tear the CIA apart from the inside. Destroy its morale. Set colleague against colleague. Orlov will denounce someone as a KGB agent inside the CIA. It will be an effective accusation. I warned you; Potemkin is a long-planned affair.”
“How will we spot him if they don’t tell us?”
Keepsake began to stroll back to his car. He turned and called over his shoulder, “Look for the man to whom the CIA suddenly grows cold. That will be the man, and he will be innocent.”
