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“Gut feeling!” expostulated Edwards. “We can’t achieve anything on gut feeling.”
“Columbus did. Mind if I see the Chief?”
“Appeal to Caesar, eh? You’re welcome. I don’t think you’ll get any change.”
But McCready did. Sir Christopher listened to his proposal carefully, then asked, “And supposing he’s loyal to Moscow after all?”
“Then I’ll know within seconds.”
“They could pick you up,” said the Chief.
“I don’t think so. Mr. Gorbachev doesn’t seem to want a diplomatic war at the moment.”
“He won’t get one,” said the Chief flatly. “Sam, you and I go back a long way. Back to the Balkans, the Cuban missile crisis, the first days of the Berlin Wall. You were damned good then, and you still are. But Sam, I may have made a mistake in bringing you into the Head Office. This is a job for a field team.”
“Keepsake won’t trust anyone else. You know that.”
The Chief sighed. “True. If anyone goes, you go. Is that it?”
“ ’Fraid so.”
The Chief thought it over for a moment. To lose Keepsake would be a devastating blow. If there was a tenth of a chance that McCready was right and Gorodov was not a plant after all, the Service should try to pull him out of there. But the political fallout of a major scandal—the Deceiver caught red-handed in Moscow—would ruin him. He sighed and turned from the window.
“All right. Sam. You can go. But you go alone. As of now, I have never heard of you. You are on your own.”
McCready prepared to go on those terms. He just hoped Mr. Gorbachev did not know them. It took him three days to make his plans.
On the second day, Joe Roth rang Calvin Bailey.
“Calvin, I’ve just come back from Alconbury. I think we should talk.”
“Sure, Joe, come on over.”
“Actually, there’s no great hurry. Why don’t you let me offer you dinner tomorrow night?”
“Ah, well now, that’s a nice thought, Joe. But Gwen and I have a pretty full schedule. I had lunch at the House of Lords today.”
“Really?”
“Yep. With the Chief of Defense Staff.”
Roth was amazed. At Langley, Bailey was chilly, distant, and skeptical. Let him loose in London, and he was like a child in a candy store. Why not? In six days, he’d be safely across the border in Budapest.
“Calvin, I know this marvelous old inn up the Thames at Eton. Serves wonderful seafood. They say Henry VIII used to have Anne Boleyn rowed up the river for secret meetings with her there.”
“Really? That old? Okay, look, Joe, tomorrow night we’re at Covent Garden. Thursday is clear.”
“Right. Thursday, Calvin. You’ve got it. I’ll be outside your apartment at eight. Thursday it is.”
The following day, Sam McCready completed his arrangements and slept what might turn out to be his last night in London.
On Thursday, three men entered Moscow on different flights. The first in was Rabbi Birnbaum. He arrived from Zurich by Swissair. The passport control officer at Scheremetyevo was from the KGB’s Border Guards Directorate, a young man with corn-blond hair and chill blue eyes. He gazed at the rabbi at length, then turned his attention to the passport. It was American, denoting the holder to be one Norman Birnbaum, age fifty-six.
Had the passport officer been older, he would have recalled the days when Moscow and indeed all Russia had many Orthodox Jews who looked like Rabbi Birnbaum. The rabbi was a stout man in a black suit with a white shirt and
black tie. He wore a full gray beard and moustache. On his face, topped by a black homburg, his eyes were masked by lenses so thick, the pupils blurred as the man peered to see. Twisted gray ringlets hung from beneath his hatband down each side of his face. The face in the passport was exactly the same, but without the hat.
The visa was in order, issued by the Soviet Consulate General in New York.
