As he left the embassy and climbed into his car Chernov was glowing. The moment he got back to Petrovka he passed the whole file from Burglary to Homicide. The fact there was supposed to be a second burglar involved was irrelevant. Without a description or the dead man’s testimony, it was a needle in a haystack.
After he had left, Fields returned to Macdonald’s office. The Head of Station was pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“What do you reckon?” he asked.
“My source says the man was beaten to death. He has a pal in the John Doe office who spotted the drawing on the wall and made the match. The postmortem report says the old boy had been about a week in the woods before he was found.”
“And that was?”
Fields consulted the notes he had written up immediately after the talk in the Carousel Bar.
“July twenty-fourth.”
“So, killed about the seventeenth or eighteenth. The day after he threw that file into Celia Stone’s car. The day I flew to London. These lads don’t waste time.”
“Which lads?”
“Well, it’s a million quid to a pint of flat beer it was the thugs commanded by that shit Grishin.”
“Komarov’s chief of personal security?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” said Macdonald. “Have you ever seen his file?”
“No.”
“You should, someday. Ex-Second Chief Directorate interrogator. Deeply nasty.”
“If it was a punishment beating, and death, who was the old man?” asked Fields. Macdonald stared out of the window, across the river to the Kremlin.
“Probably the thief himself.”
“So how did an old tramp like that get hold of it?”
“I can only suppose he was some obscure employee of one kind or another who got lucky. As it happened, extremely unlucky. You know, I really think your policeman friend is going to have to earn himself a very fat bonus.”
Buenos Aires, June 1987
IT was a bright young agent in the CIA station in the Argentine capital who first suspected Valeri Yurevitch Kruglov of the Soviet Embassy might have a flaw. The American Chief of Station consulted Langley.
The Latin America Division already had a file on him, dating from a previous Kruglov posting in the mid-seventies in Mexico City. They knew he was a Russian Latin America expert, with three such postings behind him in a twenty-year career in the Soviet Foreign Service. Because he appeared friendly and outgoing, the file even logged his career.
Born in 1944, Valeri Kruglov was the son of a diplomat, another specialist in Latin America. It was the father’s influence that got the boy into the prestigious Institute of International Relations, the MGIMO, where he learned Spanish and English. He was there from 1961 to 1966. After that he did two South American postings, in Colombia as a youth, then Mexico a decade later, before reappearing as First Secretary in Buenos Aires.
The CIA was convinced he was not KGB, but a regular diplomat. His biography was of a fairly liberal, possibly pro-Western Russian, not the usual hard-line “homo sovieticus.” The reason for the alert in the summer of 1987 had been a conversation with an Argentine official, passed on to the Americans, in which Kruglov revealed that he was returning soon to Moscow, never to travel abroad again, and that his lifestyle would plunge.
Because he was a Russian, the alert involved SE Division as well, and Harry Gaunt suggested a new face be put in front of Kruglov. As he spoke Spanish and Russian, he suggested Jason Monk. Jordan agreed.
It was a simple enough task. Kruglov had only a month to go. In the words of the song, it was now or never.
Five years after the Falklands War, with democracy restored to Argentina, Buenos Aires was a relaxed capital and it was easy for the American “businessman,” partnering a girl from the American Embassy, to meet Kruglov at a reception. Monk made sure they got on well and suggested a dinner.
The Russian, who as First Secretary had considerable freedom from his ambassador and the KGB, found the idea of dining with someone outside the diplomatic circuit attractive. Over dinner, Monk borrowed from the real-life story of his former French teacher, Mrs. Brady. He explained that his mother had been an interpreter with the Red Army and after the fall of Berlin had met and fallen in love with a young American officer. Against all the rules, they had slipped away and married in the West. Thus in the parental home, Monk had been brought up to speak English and Russian with equal fluency. After that, they dropped into Russian. Kruglov found it a relief. His Spanish was excellent but his English a strain.
Within two weeks, Kruglov’s real problem had emerged. At forty-three, divorced but with two teenage children, he was still sharing an apartment with his parents. If only he had a sum close to $20,000 he could acquire his own small flat in Moscow. As a wealthy polo player, down in Argentina to check out some new ponies, Monk would be happy to lend his new friend the money.
The Chief of Station proposed photographing the handover of the cash but Monk demurred.
“Blackmail won’t work. He either comes as a volunteer or he won’t come.”