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The officer looked up again. “The purpose of your visit to Moscow?”
“I want to visit my son for a short stay. He works at the American Embassy here.”
“Moment, please,” said the officer. He rose and retired. Behind a glass door he could be seen consulting with a senior officer who studied the passport. Orthodox rabbis were rare in a country where the last rabbinical school had been abolished decades earlier. The junior officer returned.
“Wait, please.” He gestured for the next in line to approach.
Phone calls were made. Someone in Moscow consulted a diplomatic list. The senior officer returned with the passport and whispered to the junior. Apparently there was a Roger Birnbaum listed at the Economic Section of the U.S. Embassy. The diplomatic list did not record, however, that Roger Birnbaum’s real father had retired to Florida and had last been to synagogue for his son’s bar mitzvah twenty years earlier. The rabbi was waved through.
They still checked his suitcase at customs. It contained the usual changes of shirt, socks, and shorts, another black suit, a washkit, and a copy of the Talmud in Hebrew. The customs officer flicked through it uncomprehendingly. Then he let the rabbi go.
Rabbi Birnbaum took the Aeroflot coach into central Moscow, drawing several curious or amused glances all the way. From the terminus building, he walked to the National Hotel on Manezh Square, entered the men’s room, used the urinal until the only other occupant left, and slipped into a cubicle.
The spirit gum solvent was located in his cologne flask. When he emerged, he was still in a dark jacket, but the reversible trousers were now medium gray. The hat was inside the suitcase, along with the bushy eyebrows, the beard and moustache, and the shirt and tie. His hair, instead of gray, was chestnut brown, and his torso was covered by a canary yellow polo-neck sweater that had been under his shirt. He left the hotel unnoticed, took a cab, and was dropped at the gates of the British Embassy, on the embankment opposite the Kremlin.
Two militia from the MVD stood guard duty outside the gates, on Soviet territory, and asked for his identification. He showed them his British passport and simpered at the young guard as it was examined. The young militiaman was embarrassed and handed it quickly back. Irritably, he gestured the gay Englishman into the grounds of his own embassy and raised his eyebrows expressively to his colleague as he did so. Seconds later, the Englishman disappeared through the doors.
In fact, Rabbi Birnbaum was neither a rabbi nor an American nor gay. His real name was David Thornton, and he was one of the best makeup artists in British films. The difference between makeup for the stage and that needed for films is that on stage the lights are fierce and the distance from the audience considerable. In films there are also lights, but the camera may have to work in tight close-up, a few inches from the face. Film makeup therefore has to be more subtle, more realistic.
David Thornton had worked for years at Pinewood Studios, where he was always in demand. He was also one of that corps of experts that the British Secret Intelligence Service seems amazingly able to draw upon when it needs one.
The second man to arrive in Moscow came direct from London by British Airways. He was Denis Gaunt, looking exactly like himself, save that his hair was gray and he looked fifteen years older than his real age. He had a slim attaché case chained discreetly to his left wrist, and he wore the blue tie bearing the motif of the greyhound, the sign of one of the Corps of Queen’s Messengers.
All countries have diplomatic couriers who spend their lives ferrying documents from embassy to embassy and back home. They are covered by the usages of the Treaty of Vienna as diplomatic personnel, and their luggage is not searched. Gaunt’s passport was in another name, but it was British and completely valid. He presented it and was waved through the formalities.
A Jaguar from the embassy met him, and he was taken at once to the embassy building, arriving there an hour after Thornton. He was then able to give Thornton all the tools of the makeup artist’s trade, which he had brought in his own suitcase.
The third to arrive was Sam McCready, on a Finnair flight from Helsinki. He, too, had a valid British passport in a false name, and he, too, was disguised. But in the heat of the aircraft, something had gone wrong.
His ginger wig had come slightly askew, and a wisp of darker hair showed from beneath it. The spirit gum that retained one corner of his equally ginger moustache seemed to have melted so that a fragment of the moustache had detached itself from his upper lip.
The passport officer stared at the picture in the passport and back at the man in front of him. The faces were the same—hair, moustache and all. There is nothing illegal about wearing a wig, even in Russia; many bald men do. But a moustache that comes unstuck? The passport officer, not the same one who had seen Rabbi Birnbaum—for Scheremetyevo is a big airport—also consulted a senior officer, who peered through a one-way mirror.
From behind the same mirror, a camera clicked several times, orders were given, and a number of men went from standby to full operation status. When McCready emerged from the concourse, two unmarked Moskvitch cars were waiting. He too was collected by a British Embassy car, of lower standing than a Jaguar, and was driven to the embassy, followed all the way by the two KGB vehicles, who reported back to their superiors in the Second Chief Directorate.
In the late afternoon the photos of the strange visitor arrived at Yazenevo, the headquarters of the KGB’s foreign intelligence arm, the First Chief Directorate. They ended up on the desk of the Deputy Head, General Vadim V. Kirpichenko. He stared at them, read the attached report about the wig and the corner of the moustache, and took them down to the photographic lab.
“See if you can remove the wig and moustache,” he ordered. The technicians went to work with the airbrush.
When General Kirpichenko saw the finished result, he almost laughed out loud. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “It’s Sam McCready.”
He informed the Second Chief Directorate that his own people would take over the tail forthwith. Then gave his orders: “Twenty-four hours in twenty-four. If he makes a contact, pick them both up. If he makes a collection from a drop, pick him up. If he farts in the direction of Lenin’s mausoleum, pick him up.”
He put down the phone and read again the details from McCready’s passport. He was supposed to be an electronics expert from London via Helsinki, come to sweep the embassy for listening devices, a regular chore.
“But what the hell are you really doing here?” he asked the picture staring up from his desk.
In the embassy on the embankment, McCready, Gaunt, and Thornton dined alone. The ambassador was not much pleased to have three such guests, but the request had come from the Cabinet Office, and he was assured that the disruption would last for only twenty-four hours. So far as His Excellency was concerned, the sooner these dreadful spooks were gone, the better.
“I hope it works,” said Gaunt over the coffee. “The Russians are extremely good at playing chess.”
“True,” said McCready soberly. “Tomorrow we’ll find out how good they are at the three-card trick.”
Chapter 6
At precisely five minutes to eight on a warm July morning, an unmarked Austin Montego sedan eased out of the gates of Britain’s Moscow embassy and drove across the bridge over the Moskva toward the center of the city.
According to the KGB report, Sam McCready was at the wheel, driving alone. Although his ginger wig and moustache were now impeccably in place, they were clearly visible to the watchers behind the windshields of their several cars. Telephoto-lens pictures were taken at the time, and several more were
