Brian Freemantle - The Bearpit

‘Who are you?’

The person you spoke to on the telephone.’

‘I want to come back. To Russia. To my sister,’ declared the boy simply.

It was too crowded, too bustling, for there to be any sensible sort of conversation. Through the doors Yuri saw the Howard Johnson snack bar on the opposite side of the road and said: ‘Let’s sit down and talk.’

Petr Levin needed no prompting. Ignoring the coffee Yuri bought to justify their occupation of the booth, the boy poured out an uninterrupted diatribe against his father. The most frequently used word was hate. He hated his father for the abandonment of Natalia and he hated the man for forcing him to defect and he hated him for betraying his country. It all appeared to be utterly sincere, without any indication of rehearsal or training for which Yuri was constantly attentive.

‘So what do you want to do?’ asked Yuri.

‘Come back to Russia. And something more.’

‘What?’

‘Expose my father for what he’s done. And what he’s going to do. Utterly destroy him.’

The potential trap, guaged Yuri. At last! It was normal to vilify a traitor and to be able to do so through his son – with an abandoned daughter still in the Soviet Union – would be an offer impossible for the Russians to refuse. So to refuse it would be confirmation to the FBI or the CIA that there was something wrong with the defection. He said: ‘What do you mean, what he’s going to do?’

‘He’s being taken on as a consultant by the CIA,’ disclosed the boy.

The absolute success that Belov was seeking! seized Yuri, at once. And just as quickly he had a balancing thought: wouldn’t the CIA set up this sort of approach as the last test before letting Levin in? He said: ‘When’s it happening?’

‘Pretty soon,’ said Petr contemptuously. ‘The offer was made yesterday.’

Could the boy have been taught to act as well as this, wondered Yuri. He said: ‘How long have you planned this?’

‘Weeks,’ admitted Petr. ‘I refused to cooperate at first and then I realized the way to escape was to lull them into thinking I had accepted it. And it worked, didn’t it?’

‘And they never suspected!’

‘Not a clue,’ boasted the boy confidently. ‘They still think I am at school. Will do, until collection this afternoon. Then the panic will start.’

So he could act, thought Yuri. Remembering the letters he knew so well, Yuri said: ‘You love your sister very much?’

Instead of answering, Petr said: ‘How could he do that! Just run and leave her!’

A madman made him: a madman still in power, thought Yuri. He needed time, a period to seek out the hidden dangers. Yevgennie Levin had to be protected, at all and every cost. Nothing could interfere with achieving the complete and ultimate object of the operation, getting a KBG man into the heart of the CIA. And that hinged upon whatever he did – or did not do – in the next few minutes. He said: ‘How have you been treated since the defection? All of you, I mean?’

Petr shrugged and said: ‘OK.’

‘Just OK?’ If there’d been American hostility, it would indicate mistrust.

‘Better than that, I suppose,’ conceded the youth reluctantly.

‘Well treated then?’

‘It’s a pretty impressive house,’ said Petr, in further concession. ‘There are guards and helicopters everywhere, particularly after the scare.’

‘What scare?’

‘I don’t know how the Americans found out but apparently a search was launched by Moscow to find us. One night there was a hell of a flap. You wouldn’t believe it!’

I would, thought Yuri: I would. So Kazin had somehow leaked the information. He wished he knew what the Americans were going to do with the dossiers: they should have arrived by now. What was he going to do if for some reason the Americans did not react as he expected? Defection was forever. The words thrust themselves into his mind, shocking him. Preposterous. Whatever faced him if he were recalled to Moscow Yuri knew he could never imagine becoming a traitor. His mind moved on, to another remark of the boy’s, the idea initially not an idea at all. He said: ‘You love your country?’

‘Of course I do: why do you think I want to go back?’

‘How much?’

There was a by-now familiar shrug. ‘You know what it’s like: it’s not something you can say. It’s something that’s there: something you can feel. Always feel.’

It was, agreed Yuri. The Russian characteristic that the West found impossible to comprehend, maybe because it was so difficult verbally to express. The idea was hardening: if it were a trap then he’d be confronting one trap with another. Forcing whichever agency it was to try something else, which by their so doing would provide positive confirmation that Levin was not yet completely secure. He said: ‘Do you love your country enough to work for it?’

‘Work for it!’

‘By doing exactly what I ask you to do?’

‘What?’

Petr listened with growing and obvious incredulity and then said: ‘That would mean going back to Connecticut!’

‘Yes.’

‘And never returning to Russia.’

‘But becoming a Soviet hero.’

‘I don’t know if I could do it.’

‘No one has suspected you so far.’

Petr shook his head in refusal. ‘Natalia,’ he said. ‘I won’t turn away from Natalia, like everyone else.’

Kazin had to be destroyed, by what he had done, thought Yuri. He said: ‘I promise you – if you do as I ask – that Natalia will be released.’

‘ When she is released,’ bargained the boy.

It was an easy concession, agreed Yuri. He’d gained the time and set his trap. ‘A deal,’ he said. ‘Hurry: you’ve a train to catch.’

Because of the CIA’s worldwide and detailed use of Yuri’s material it was to be several months before a full assessment was finally compiled upon the success of the propaganda coup. But from the first day it was being likened to the brilliant use of Krushchev’s secret denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, which by coincidence was the comparison in that later, complete assessment.

As with the Krushchev speech, the Agency broke the story in the New York Times – which Yuri considered ironic, after the arrangement he’d made with Caroline – which ensured its global syndication as well as publication throughout America. NBC rushed out a television documentary which was again shown in every European and English-speaking country, and an author was commissioned through one of the Agency’s front publishing companies to write an instant non-fiction book which on publication week entered the bestseller lists of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times on the strength of advanced publicity. The book got on to the bestseller lists in ten other countries but achieved its record in the New York Times which had made the initial disclosure, remaining in its charts for a total of fifty-six weeks. An independent company made a film from the book, which Warner Brothers distributed, guaranteeing constant embarrassment to the Soviet Union for almost two years.

The KGB’s internal investigation in Moscow was conducted in absolute secrecy – as was the actual trial of Panchenko and Kazin – and precise details never leaked out, although the GRU were successful with some planted stories, the majority of which were concocted but all of which were published, keeping the presses and the cameras turning. It was never discovered, for instance, that Kazin’s protests of innocence were destroyed by Panchenko’s production of the protective tapes he’d made. Or how Panchenko’s murder of Agayans was proved by ballistic tests upon the security chief’s pistol, which he was carrying at the moment of his arrest.