Langley, September 1990
COLONEL Turkin, agent Lysander, sent one urgent personal message to Jason Monk. It was on a postcard that showed the open terrace of the Opera Café in East Berlin. The message was simple and innocent. “Hope to see you again, all best wishes, José-Maria.” It had been posted to a CIA safe mailbox in Bonn and the frank said it had been dropped into a mailbox in West Berlin.
The CIA people in Bonn did not know who had sent it; only that it was for Jason Monk and he was in Langley. They forwarded it. That it had been posted in West Berlin meant nothing. Turkin had simply flicked it, fully stamped, through the open window of a car with West Berlin plates heading back into the west. He had simply muttered, “Bitte,” to the startled driver and kept on walking. By the time his tails came around the corner, they had missed it. The kindly Berliner had posted it.
Such hit-and-miss measures are not recommended, but stranger things have happened.
It was the date scrawled above the message that was odd. It was wrong. The card was posted on September 8, and a German or Spaniard would write that as: 8/9/90 with the day first, then the month, then the year. But the date on the card seemed to have been written American-style. It said 9/23/90. To Jason Monk it meant: I need a meet at 9:00 P.M. on September 23. It was meant to be read in reverse. And the sign-off with a Spanish name meant: This is serious and urgent.
The place was obvious, the terrace of the Opera Café, East Berlin.
On October 3 the final reunification of the city of Berlin was due to take place, along with the reunification of Germany. The writ of the USSR in the east would cease. The West Berlin police would move in and take over. The KGB operation would have to withdraw to a much smaller unit inside the Soviet Embassy on Unter Den Linden. Some of the huge operation would have to be withdrawn to Moscow. Turkin might be going with them. If he wanted to run, now was the time, but he had a wife and son back in Moscow. The autumn school term had just started.
There was something he wanted to say, and he wanted to say it personally to his friend. Urgently. Unlike Turkin, Monk knew of the disappearance of Delphi, Orion, and Pegasus. As the days ticked by he became sick with worry.
¯
WHEN the last guest but one had left, the copies of all the documents save Sir Nigel’s personal copies were burned under supervision until there were only ashes that scattered on the wind.
Irvine left with his host, grateful for the lift in the Grumman back to Washington. From the airplane’s secure phone system he made a call to the D.C. area and set up a lunch with an old friend.
Then he relaxed in the deep leather chair opposite his host.
“I know we are supposed to ask no further questions,” said Saul Nathanson as he poured two glasses of a very fine Chardonnay. “But could I ask you a personal one?”
“My dear chap, of course. Can’t guarantee to answer it though.”
“I’ll fire anyway. You came to Wyoming hoping the council would sanction some kind of action, did you not?”
“Well, I suppose so. But I thought you said it all, better than I could.”
“We were all shocked. Genuinely. But there Were seven Jews around that ta
ble. Why you?”
Nigel Irvine stared down at the passing clouds beneath. Somewhere below them were the vast wheat prairies, even now being harvested. All that food. He saw again another place, far away and long ago; British Tommies puking in the sun, the bulldozer drivers with faces masked against the stench, pushing the mounds of corpses into gaping pits, living skeleton arms coming out from the stinking bunks, human claws asking mutely for food.
“Don’t know really. Been through it once. Don’t want to see it all again. Old-fashioned, I suppose.”
Nathanson laughed.
“Old-fashioned. Okay, I’ll drink to that. Will you be going into Russia yourself?”
“Oh, I don’t see how it can be avoided.”
“Just you take care of yourself, my friend.”
“Saul, in the Service we used to have a saying. There are old agents and there are bold agents; but there are no old, bold agents. I’ll take care.”
¯
AS he was staying in Georgetown, his friend had proposed a pleasant little restaurant of French ambiance called La Chaumière, barely a hundred yards from the Four Seasons Hotel.
Irvine was there first, found a bench nearby, and sat and waited, an old man with silver hair around whom the young roller bladers wove a path.
The chief of the SIS has long been a more hands-on executive than the director of the CIA, and when he used to come to Langley it was with his fellow intelligence professionals, the Deputy Directors for Ops and Intel, with whom he felt the greater empathy. They shared a common bond not always possible with the political appointee from the White House.
The cab drew up and a white-haired American of similar age climbed out and paid. Irvine crossed the street and tapped him on the shoulder.