Brian Garfield - Checkpoint Charlie

They share a border with the Soviet Union. The world being what it is, they make a few concessions to the Russians by way of trade agreements and the like. Soviet-made cars are sold in Finland, for example, although few Finns choose to drive them; the Finns don’t admit it loudly in public but they loathe the Russians and if you want a clout in the face a good way to earn one is to state within a Finn’s earshot that Finland is within the Soviet sphere of influence. It emphatically is not; Finland is neither a Communist country nor an intimidated one. It is, however, a nation of realists and while it does not bow obsequiously to the Soviets, neither does it go out of its way rudely to offend them. It treads a middle ground between hostility and friendship, the object being the preservation of Finnish independence rather than the influencing of power blocs. Finland practices true and admirable neutrality.

Mikhail Yaskov was an old fashioned master spy. He had run strings of agents everywhere in the West — usually with brilliant success. The only American agents I knew of who’d come level against him were Miles Kendig, who was said to be dead now, and my colleague Joe Cutter, who by then was running our operations out in the Far East. I was the only one left in Langley who had a prayer of besting Yaskov so I was the one picked to fly to Finland.

The KGB had sent Yaskov into Helsinki because of chronic failures in the Soviet espionage network there. The Finns were too shrewd for most of the Russian colonels who showed up at the Soviet Embassy in ill-fitting Moscow serge disguised as chauffeurs of Second Secretaries or Trade Mission delegates. The apparatus was a shambles and the Organs in Moscow had dispatched Yaskov to take charge in Helsinki, as if the KGB network were a musical comedy having trouble in New Haven and Yaskov were Abe Burrows sent in to doctor it up.

Yaskov was too sharp to put his foot in anything and there was no likelihood of his giving the Finns sufficient legitimate reason to deport him. If they declared him persona non grata in the absence of clear evidence of his perfidy, it would provoke Moscow’s wrath: this Helsinki preferred to avoid.

Therefore as a gesture of good will I was flown to Helsinki to find a way to get Yaskov out of the country and keep him out — without involving the Finnish government.

It was a bloody impossible job against a bloody brilliant opponent. But I wasn’t really worried. I’m the best, bar none.

In my time I have pulled off a number of cute and sometimes complicated capers and I suppose, given my physique and age, I could aptly be called a confidence man rather than a man of action. But Yaskov was not susceptible to confidence games. He wasn’t a man to be fooled by elaborate tricks — he knew them all; in fact he’d invented most of them.

There really was only one way to attack him: head-on and straight up. And I had only two weapons to employ against him — his own vanity and his awareness of mortality.

I made the call from a public coin phone in the cavernous Stockmann department store.

Comrade Yaskov could not come to the telephone immediately. Could the caller please leave a number to be called back?

No, I could not. I would call again in an hour. Please tell Comrade Mikhail Aleksandrovitch to expect my call. Thank you.

When I called again Yaskov came to the phone and chuckled at me in his suave avuncular fashion. He had a rich deep voice and spoke excellent English with an Oxford inflection. “How good to hear your voice, Charlie. I do hope we can get together and exchange notes about the Lapland scenery. Two foreigners in a strange land and all that. Perhaps we can meet informally.”

“By all means.”

It was elementary code, designed to set up a meeting without witnesses or seconds.

I said, “Do you happen to know a fellow named Tower?”

“The Senator from Texas?”

“No. Here in Finland.”

“I see. Yes, I know of him.”

“Perhaps we could meet him tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“I don’t mind, Mikhail. You pick a spot.”

“Would Tavern Number Four suit you?”

“Fine, I’ll see you there.” I smiled and cradled the phone.

There was a place called the Tavern #4 but we wouldn’t be there. The conversation had been designed to mislead anyone who might be eavesdropping on the call — one could depend on the Soviet Embassy’s lines being tapped, possibly by several different organizations. The fellow named Tower was in fact a place — the town of Lahti, within fair commuting distance of Helsinki; the town was known for its landmark, a great high water tower that loomed on stilts above the piney landscape. The number four established the time for the meeting.

I was there at three, an hour ahead of schedule, to inspect the area and insure it hadn’t been primed with spies or ambushers. My eyes don’t miss much; after forty minutes I felt secure and awaited Yaskov openly in the parking lot.

It was a pleasant sunny day with a touch of autumn chill creeping south from Lapland: Lahti is hardly 100 kilometres north of Helsinki and the forest cools the air.

Precisely at four Yaskov arrived. It might have been seemly and sensible for him to drive himself, in a Soviet-built Moskvitch or Pobeda, but Yaskov was fond of his comforts and he sailed elegantly into view in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven silver Mercedes limousine. Like me he was a man who stood out in crowds anyway — he was not the sort of executive who dwelt in anonymity — and I believe The Organs must have put up with his ostentatious eccentricities on account of the excellence of his performances.

The chauffeur was, so far as I could tell, simply a chauffeur; his face did not flash any mug photos against the screen of my mind. He could have been a recent recruit or an agent whose face had not been put on file in the West but I doubted it because if the man were of any importance Yaskov would not have exposed his face to me. The chauffeur trotted around to open the limousine’s back door and Yaskov emerged smiling, uncoiling himself joint by joint, a very tall lean handsome figure in Saville Row pinstripes, a Homburg tipped askew across his silver hair. His pale intense blue eyes, illuminated from within, were at once the shrewdest and kindest eyes I’d ever known and I had always attributed part of his success to those extraordinary sighted organs: I suspected they had inspired more candor from his victims than had all the drugs and torture apparatus in the Arbat and Lubianka. Yaskov could charm the Sphinx out of its secrets.

As always he carried a cane. He owned an extensive collection of them. This one was a Malacca, suitably gnarled and gleaming. The excuse was an old leg injury of some kind but he walked as gracefully as an athlete and the cane was a prop, an affectation and I suppose if necessary a weapon.

He transferred it to his left hand and gave me his quick firm handshake. “Such a pleasure to see you again. When was our last meeting, do you recall?”

“Paris, two years ago. When we were all chasing Kendig.” He remembered it as well as I did but it was a harmless amenity and we both smiled. I said, “Why don’t we take my car?” — drawling it with grave insouciance: I didn’t want the chauffeur around.

“Why not indeed,” Yaskov said carelessly. He made a vague sign to the grey-uniformed man, instructing him to wait by the limo, and followed me to my hired Volvo.

We drove out of town along a country road that curled gently through the forest. I made a right here, a left there. After twenty minutes — small talk between us — I pulled onto the verge and we walked across a carpet of pine needles to the edge of a crystal blue lake. Central Finland has thousands of such lakes, each as postcard beautiful as the next; with a suitable net you can scoop up your supper from the bottom — fresh-water crayfish.