A Day in the Country

Moscow: October 13, 1998, 10:17 A.M. Sam Waterman spent the morning of his 45th birthday a hostage to his profession, stuffed rudely onto the rear floorboard of one of the consulate's Ziv sedans, the drive shaft hump wedged against his kidneys, his long legs tucked fetal, his body hidden under a damp blanket. Even though he knew he couldn't be seen through the tinted windows, he still held his breath as the car clunked over the antiterrorist barriers at the Russian police check-point outside the garage gate. He exhaled slowly when the driveshaft whined as the car merged into the late morning traffic.

"Keep going, keep going," Sam instructed tersely from under musty cover. "Don't check your mirrors. Just drive. Nice and easy."

"Don't have a cow, man." That was consular officer Tom Kennedy, imitating Bart Simpson. Tom, who'd been recruited to do the driving, could impersonate Bart perfectly. He was still working on his Homer, though, reviewing night after night the videotapes his sister sent him through the mail pouch--which tells you what Moscow's social life has to offer a reasonably good-looking African American juniorgrade diplomat, even in these post-Soviet days.

Sam grunted and shifted slightly, trying to reduce the pressure on his kidneys as the car turned left, heading west.

"We're on Kutuzovskiy Prospekt," Kennedy told him. "Doh. Crossroads of the world."

"Tom, put a cork in it" Christ he'd warned the kid this was serious business, and Kennedy still wanted to talk. Not good, because they weren't safe. Not by a long shot. FSB, the Russian internal security agency had inherited the KGB's elaborate passive surveillance system. Vizirs they were called--long-range, high-powered telescopes mounted on tripods, positioned in buildings along Moscow's major thoroughfares. The watchers would scan for diplomatic plates and peer inside the cars. If they saw the driver's lips move, they'd take note. Was he talking to someone hidden in the car? Was he broadcasting? If they thought you were up to no good, they'd send the police to do a traffic stop--diplomatic plates or no.

And Sam couldn't afford a traffic stop. Not today.

He had to meet General Pavel Baranov at precisely five past one, and the rendezvous was critical: Baranov had used his emergency call-out signal, an inconspicuous broken chalk line on a weatherworn lamppost 60 yards from the entrance to the Arbatskaya metro stop. Sam had seen the short-long-long-short Morse code signal last night on his regular evening jog-- a five-mile run that began outside the embassy's faded walls and proceeded on a meandering but consistent route that took him all the way to the western boundary of the Kremlin and back to the embassy.

The Arbatskaya signal site and the letter P were to be used by Baranov only under crisis conditions. Still in his running gear, Sam sent Langley a code word--secret "blue-striper," an urgent cable alerting his division chief to Baranov's emergency signal, detailing his operational plan and requesting comment. Today he was awake by five, running the operation in his mind. By six he was in the office, checking for respeonse from Langley (there was none, which was typical) and removing gear from the duffel he kept in the station's walk-in safe.

The next step was to shanghai Tom Kennedy, one of three greenhorn consular officers Sam had identified as potential decoys. The decoy factor was critical. As station chief, Sam was a "declared" intelligence officer. And thanks to an American defector, a CIA turncoat named Orville Madison who worked at Moscow Center for the aggressive new FSB director, Vladimir Putin, Russian counterintelligence knew who was Agency and who wasn't.

If one of Sam's people drove, surveillance was virtually guaranteed. So he'd used an outsider, a junior consular officer the Russians thought was uninvolved in intelligence gathering.

At 9:06 A.M., Sam strode unannounced into the expansive office of Sandra Wheeler, the consul general. At 9:12 he returned to his own eighth-floor quarters. Seven minutes after that, there was a tentative knock on Sam's door. [Enter Thomas Jefferson Kennedy, Foreign Service Officer Grade Four, stage left.] Twelve minutes later, a wideeyed Tom Kenney headed for the garrage, having received his first inculcation into the shadowy Wilderness of Mirrors in which Sam Waterman had lived and worked for almost 19 years.

•

10.38. The drive train had developed a nasty vibration. Sam could feel it shudder through the floorboard. He was sweating even though the Ziv's heater didn't work. He lay silent, eyes closed, counting off the seconds, timing the route he'd painstakingly devised as Tom drove in blessed quiet. They'd be heading northwest now, less than a kilometer from Ring Road, which encircled the city. At the Volokolamskoe on-ramp they'd turn north toward the M10 and Moscow's Sheremetevo-airport.

But they wouldn't go there. Instead, Kennedy would exit south onto Leningradskoe and divert to a narrow, deserted strip of parkland where Sam would roll out. Then Tom would drive like hell to the airport, where he'd wait in the no-parking zone--in vain-- for a consular official scheduled to arrive from Berlin. And, yes, tickets had been bought. Sam had thought of everything, down to the smallest detail. "Plausible" and "denial," after all, were the foremost watchwords of his particular faith.

The Ziv banked hard right. In his head, Sam saw the exit and the industrial zone. He felt Tom brake, accelerate, then brake again. Show time. Sam pulled off the blanket, reached up, opened the rear door and scrambled out next to the pockmarked brick wall of an alley. He rapped the Ziv's door. "Go-go-go!"

Alone, he made his way southwest toward a swath of green parkland. He checked the cheap Bulgarian watch on his wrist. He was two minutes behind schedule.

10:52. Sam caught the sparsely occupied ferry with 75 seconds to spare, paid his ticket and sat on a bench in the rear of the smoky passenger cabin for the six-minute ride to Zaharkovo. Halfway across, he went to the toilet, a cramped comaprtment that stank of urine. He stepped across a puddle under the tin trough that served as a pissoir, entered the single stall, shut the door and quickly shed his long black nylon overcoat. Underneath he wore a thigh-length brown leather jacket. He stuffed the black coat behind the toilet, pulled a wool cap from his jacket pocket and jammed it on his head. He left the men's room just in time to feel the engines reverse as the boat pulled alongside the quay. Without reentering the cabin, he nudged his way to the rail, marched up the dock and walked across the street. There he boarded bus number 96, which he rode to the Tushinskaya metro stop. Sixty-nine minutes and three train changes later, he emerged from Teksilshchiki station, crossed the road and walked gingerly over a single rusting set of railroad tracks into a deserted industrial park where, in the old days, they'd assembled Moskvich automobiles as part of Joe Stalin's workers' paradise.

What Sam had performed since leaving the Ziv was a Surveillance Detection Route, a time course during which he'd had half a dozen opportunities to spot a hostile tail. Not to shake it, however. Simply to identify it. Only in Hollywood do CIA officers shake a tail. In real life, you spot the opposition. But you do nothing to alert them. If the other side realizes it has been tagged, it will change surveillance methods, and the cycle has to begin all over. Sam had spent weeks crafting each segment of this SDR, even though he'd use it only once.

He walked until he reached an alley that had a row of corrugated-sheetmetal gated sheds where Muscovites bribed the watchmen in hard currency so they could keep their autos under roof. The streets leading to these shanties were deserted. Even if they had been crowded, no one would have paid Sam any mind, because the tall, grayeyed man looked like a local.

Careful to avoid getting mud on his scuffed shoes, he stepped around a rusted Latta with a tarp spread under the rear of its chassis. There were two blue-jeaned legs poking out. Sam rapped the Latta's hood. "Yuri Gregorovich, is that you under there, or should I call the police?"

Yuri G. Semerov rented the shed next to Sam's and owned a store near the Arbat, where he sold everything from fake czarist antiques to Soviet Army uniforms. Sam knew the Russian had been checked out to ensure that he wasn't a provocateur.

The legs crabbed from under the vehicle, followed by a torso, then a thick arm holding a big crescent wrench, and finally a broad, flat, mustached Tatar face that peered up warmly at Sam. "Hello, Sergei Anatolyvich."

(continued on page 150)Country(continued from page 88)

So far as Yuri knew, Sergei Anatolyvich Kozlov was an up-and-coming businessman with an unhappy marriage in Moscow and a mistress near Podolsk. And if he'd checked--something Sam knew he hadn't--Sam's cover would have been confirmed. "Long time no see," Yuri said. "How's it going?"

"Any better I couldn't stand it," Sam answered effortlessly in Moscow-accented Russian. It was a gift. Some people have an aptitude for mathematics or science. Others are innate painters or musicians. Sam had an ear for languages. He learned them quickly and retained them. He spoke Russian at a 4.86 level, in addition to 3.8-level French and workable German, Polish and Czech. To get a better rating in Russian he'd have had to be born in the Soviet Union. Sam focused on Yuri and smiled mischievously. "Anytime I escape to Podolsk for a few hours, life is great."

"I can imagine," Yuri said wistfully. He pulled himself into a sitting position and brandished the wrench. "Hey, have you a number 13 socket? This piece of shit won't catch on what's left of my tailpipe bracket bolt."

"I'll look." Sam withdrew from his pocket a bunch of keys attached to a chain clipped to his belt. He selected and unlocked a trio of padlocks the size of paperback books, and replaced the locks on their hasps. He scraped the battered door of the shed across the wet ground and disappeared inside.

There was silence for about 40 seconds. Yuri wasn't aware that Sam had retrieved a small electronic gadget from his jacket and quickly checked the car for listening devices and locator beacons. The Russian heard only the sounds of an ignition stammering, followed by the hiccuping of an engine starting. After half a dozen puffs of gray-black smoke emanated from the shed, Yuri watched as a beat-up Zhiguli coupe with local plates backed out onto the uneven dirt, sputtering and backfiring.

Sam opened the car door and eased his big frame out from behind the wheel, his hand still playing with the choke. "I'll look for the socket for your Bentley while my Ferrari warms up."

Thirty seconds later he was back from the shed. "Nothing," Sam said. "I must have taken them home." He wrestled with the shed door, slapped the hasps closed and replaced the padlocks. "Sorry, Yuri Gregorovich."

"No problem." Yuri said, watching as Sam compressed himself into the car. Lucky bastard, he thought, to have a piece of ass on the side. Then he rolled onto his back and pulled himself under the Latta, cursing the cheap Georgian wrench as he heard the Zhiguli's engine grind off into the distance.

•

1:04 p.m. Sam edged north on Prospekt Mira, caught the light and turned left. Sixty feet past the Metro, he pulled over just long enough to pick up a short, muscular man in a cheap fur hat, thick, patchwork leather hunting coat and construction worker's boots.

Sam extended a gloved hand to the Russian. "Pavel Dmitriyvich."

The Russian got into the car and slammed the door closed on his second try. "Sergei Anatolyvich," he responded, grasping the American's hand tightly.

Sam gunned the engine and spun the wheel, and the little car accelerated. "This is only our second meeting," he said in English.

"Second meeting. Got it."

Sam turned the car left onto a small side street. "You have been trying to recruit me so you can pass me along to military intelligence. I have been open to the idea, but you're dubious because you believe me to be a provocateur. Nevertheless, you suggested we get out of Moscow to escape CIA countersurveillance and talk things over."

"Dubious. Countersurveillance. Got it."

Sam made a series of turns, left, then right, along one-way streets, talking as he drove. "The Arbatskaya lamppost is dead. If you need an emergency meeting from here on, it's an 'F' on the first lamppost to the left of the Lenin Library metro stop as you're facing north."

"Lenin Library, first left as I'm facing north. Letter F. Got it."

"You remember what F is?"

"F?'" The Russian was insulted. "Short-short-long-short, yes. My Morse is probably better than yours. In fact----"

"I'm changing the backup dead drop," Sam interrupted. This hurried trade-craft was known to case officers as the Mad Minute because it had to be completed within the first instant of an agent meeting. "Church of All Distressed. Third row from the back. Right-hand bench. Fifth seat."

"All Distressed. Third row right. Fifth seat. Got it."

"Emergency rendezvous changed to 1420 hours. The location remains the same."

"Fourteen twenty. Got it."

"I'll want to see you again in two days. There will be a message at the Menshikov Palace dead drop."

"Menshikov. Got it." Baranov paused. "Is that it?"

"Yes," Sam said, turning the car north toward Kaliningrad.

"By the way, where are we going today?" Baranov asked.

"Zagorsk. I thought we'd take the scenic route."

"'The scenic route?' Good--no vizirs." Baranov removed the rabbit-fur hat, revealing cropped blond hair. The scenic route was a series of narrow, largely unused back roads that wound through thick pine forests past dachas and farms for roughly 25 kilometers to the 14th century walled town.

Sam scanned rearview and sideview mirrors and was happy with what he saw. "OK," he said, "What's your crisis, Pavel?"

"It's not my crisis, Sam," the Russian answered gravely. "It's yours." He unfastened his hunting coat, reached inside and eased a heavy envelope from the game pocket.

Baranov opened the envelope and extracted a single page from between two pieces of cardboard. He looked at Sam. "Are your hands clean?"

Sam shed his thick leather gloves, revealing latex ones beneath. He reached out eagerly. Still, Baranov withheld the sheet. "Gently, Sam."

Sam took the page, laid it atop the steering wheel and anchored it gently with the edge of his left hand. He glanced down, his eyes skipping between the road ahead and the sheet just below his line of sight. The document bore a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service logo, a top-secret stamp and the legend "Urgent: Eyes of the President." A paper patch sat at the topmost right-hand corner of the sheet.

Pavel suddenly shouted. "Sam, Sam, watch out!"

"Ebat'kopat!--holy shit!" Sam braked hard, barely missing the bumper of a slow-moving truck. He lifted the paper off the wheel, used his right hand to steer around the vehicle, checked the distance between the Zhiguli and the car ahead, then dropped his eyes to devour every syllable.

Devour, because Sam Waterman understood the neat lines of Cyrillic type signified the end of life as he knew it.

Executive summary

12.10.1998

01 Source R reports that President W. Clinton held a secret meeting on 09.10.1998 with CIA director G. Tenet, Deputy Secretary of State S. Talbott and National Security Council chief S. Berger regarding terrorist threats to Americans in former Soviet Republics.

02 Clinton was advised by Tenet that American business interests in the former republics of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have been targeted by Al Qaeda.

03 Tenet suggested that CIA identify, isolate and neutralize the Al Qaeda threat through covert action. He was challenged by Talbott, who maintained that covert action would violate Azeri and Kazakh sovereignty and antagonize the Russian leadership. Berger argued that if the CIA's covert action program backfired, the consequences could include regional instability that would jeopardize lucrative American petroleum partnerships.

04 Clinton agreed with Talbott and Berger.

05 Analysis follows.

Sam felt as if he'd been gut-shot. If the document were real, the implications were cosmic. There's another traitor in Washington--a high-level one. This was a goddamn all-star session, not some low-level policy gang bang with 30 junior staffers drinking lattes.

And if the document was a fabrication, the implications were equally cosmic. Pavel Baranov was a double agent--probably a creation of Orville Madison's aggressive CI operation--and everything the general had been feeding Sam for the past six months, every rumor, memo, briefing paper and report, had to be reevaluated.

Sam kept his surging emotions under check. "Pavel, where did you get this?"

"I managed to get it. That should be enough."

It wasn't. Not by a mile. "Pavel----"

The Russian retrieved the sheet from Sam's hand.

"Where's the rest?" Sam asked.

The Russian placed the document atop its envelope. "At Lubyanka. In a safe." He tapped the sheet with a stubby forefinger. "Where this has to go by tonight if I want to stay alive."

"I need it, Pavel."

"No way."

"Then we go back to Moscow so I can make a copy."

"I can't risk that." Baranov pointed at the thick paper patch. "See that? They hand-number these. I don't want you knowing whose copy I was able to get. And who knows what else they did."

Sam understood only too well. Highly classified documents were often individually typed, with minor alterations in the punctuation or the writing. Then they were numbered. If the document was leaked, the very wording that appeared in the newspapers--or was intercepted on its way to a hostile intelligence service--could lead counterintelligence to the perpetrator. If this page was genuine, there was no way Pavel would allow him to make a copy.

On the other hand, if the page was a fabrication, there was no way Pavel would allow Sam to reproduce it. It would be like handing over a signed confession.

Sam took his eyes off the road long enough to give his passenger a piercing glance. "I'll have to handwrite a copy, Pavel."

The general's jaw tightened. He rubbed his wispy mustache with his right forefinger. He bit his lip. He looked into Sam's eyes, trying to read what was going on in the American's brain

Sam, opaque, gave nothing back. He kept the Zhiguli's speed even, gauged the distance between his car and the truck that he was about to overtake. He floored the accelerator and passed the vehicle, letting silence do his work for him. Silence was a great ally in intelligence Young case officers often spoke too much--chattered like nervous birds. Better to give your target time to think. And then you'd close the deal with a few well-chosen words.

So Sam waited him out. There was, he thought as he drove, more than a little irony in the fact that it had been a battle royal To recruit Baranov in the first place. Opposition had come from an unlikely direction: Langley itself. The problem had begun in 1992, when the CIA sent a delegation headed by a senior case officer named Frank Dillard to meet with the KGB leadership and discuss common areas of interest. The sessions resulted in the formation of what Dillard described as "a symbiotic relationship with a fraternal intelligence service."

How Dillard could have called it fraternal was beyond Sam's comprehension, especially since it was clear to Sam, who was deputy chief in Paris, that the Russians would never ever stop targeting America. And yet, incredibly, three days after Dillard returned to Washington, he'd sent a cable over the signature of the deputy director for operations, instructing CIA stations worldwide that every Russian agent was to be dropped and that operations against Russian targets were to be closed down.

Dillard's cable was bad enough. Worse was that even after the Aldrich Ames and Harold Nicholson debacles (which had proved Sam's premonitions correct), neither the CIA's leadership nor the administration nor the congressional intelligence oversight committees reversed the idiotic no-recruiting-Russians rules.

Which meant even in post-Ames 1997, Sam had had to fight tooth and nail for Pavel Baranov. He'd done so because it hadn't been EMSI--the trade-craft acronym for the vulnerabilities of ego, money, sex and ideology--that had caused the general to become a traitor. Baranov was different. He saw himself as a soldier whose mission was to rebuild a nation enslaved for more than half century. He wanted freedom and self-determination, and he was willing to spy for his former enemy to achieve his goals.

Having uncovered this idealistic chink in the Russian's otherwise well-armored personality, Sam fought for the opportunity to exploit it in America's interests. And he had prevailed over strong resistance. It had been worth the risk to his career, too--at least until today.

Sam note Baranov's fretful expression. Their relationship was complex. There was no ethical ambiguity, for example, in the fact that Sam honestly liked Pavel, although he often coldly manipulated the Russian. Their association was even fraternal: Both were military men. Sam, a Marine, had been awarded the Bronze Star in Vietnam; Baranov, a paratrooper, fought in Afghanistan. The experience of combat gave them common ground on which to build rapport.

But when it came to crunch time, Sam knew that despite male bonding and camaraderie, it was he, not Pavel Baranov, who had to exert control. Indeed control was the key to all successful case officer-agent interaction. He had to run Pavel Baranov. It couldn't be the other way around.

Still pushing--leaning on--an agent was never pleasant. Yet Sam understood he didn't always have to like what he did--he simply had to get the job done.

And so he pushed. "I have to make a copy, Pavel. I need a piece of paper in my hand. That's how things work. You Know it and I know it."

Silence. He watched as the general blinked thrice, half-nodded and then said in whispered Russian, "But not the exact language, Sam, please. You must paraphrase."

"Agreed," Sam replied, his heart pounding.

Sam looked at the Russian's worried face. Was it because he really was in danger, or had Pavel sensed Sam's perception that he might be a double?

•

As the little car idled on a side street that was just south of Zagorsk's Soviet-skaya Square, the two Men worked out the language like a pair of lawyers hammering out a plea bargain. Beyond the square they could see past tourist buses to the walls of the 14th century fortress that held a farmer's market, half a dozen churches and a classic Russian citadel. When they'd finished, Sam locked the car and they strolled through the old kremlin gates. Pavel bought fresh vegetables that even generals found hard to come by in Moscow's sparsely stocked stores. Sam bought a decoratively painted Balalaika as a thank-you gift for Tom Kennedy. Then he watched as Pavel bargained for a set of matryoshka dolls. Sam had never seen anything like them: five fierce-faced KGB goons in red-tabbed green uniforms and brown pistol belts.

Baranov examined the dolls. The largest carried a pistol in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other. "He's about to serve up a Lubyanka breakfast," Baranov said. "You know what that is, Sergei Anatolyvich?"

"A cigarette and a bullet, Pavel Dmitriyvich."

"Correct." The general agreed on a price handed rubles to the vendor and stuffed the hollowed-out figures inside one another. Juggling his groceries, he presented the matryoshka to Sam. "Happy birthday, Sergei Anatolyvich."

Sam was genuinely touched by the gesture. "Thank you for remembering, Pavel Dmitriyvich."

Baranov flushed, embarrassed. "It is nothing."

He still has a boyish face Sam thought, even after having been to war. He patted the figurines. "I will treasure them. And to celebrate, why not let buy us a late lunch?"

The general checked the thick gold Rolex on his wrist. "I think we'd best get going," he said. "I have things to do in town."

"So do I, it would seem."

•

When they were about halfway to the M8, on a winding stretch of back road bordered on both sides by thick forest, a Mercedes overtook them. It was a 500 series with the opaque windows favored by mafiyosi. The driving lights flashed three times in Sam's rearview mirror, and he steered toward the shoulder to let the black behemoth pass, catching a glance of the driver and the front-seat passenger as they drew close, then swerved around the Zhiguli and disappeared around the next curve.

"Byki," Baranov grumbled, using the idiom for mafiyosi muscle.

"Da--from the look of the ugly torpedo riding shotgun," Sam agreed.

A minute or so later, a second and a third Mercedes came up quickly behind the Zhiguli. Again, Sam edged shoulder-ward, but the cars stayed tight on his bumper. Then they dropped back. He glanced ahead, saw a tight curve and slowed to ease through it. As he went around it he saw the first Mercedes, not 300 yards ahead. It was blocking the road. Behind it men crouched with weapons.

Too late, Sam realized what was happening. They'd been targeted by criminals. Where had all his counterinsurgency training gone? "Shit," he shouted. "Pavel--it's a goddamn ambush."

Stay calm, he thought. You're a professional. Remember what they taught you about running roadblocks. He gauged the closing distance and measured the space between the Mercedes that sat astride the two-lane road and the narrow shoulder. Just enough, he prayed, so I can thread the needle. He floored the clutch, downshifted into second and, mindless of the Zhiguli's protesting transmission, aimed the car at the middle of the narrow gap between the Mercedes' rear quarter panel and the tree line.

That was when the big sedan behind him came up fast and smacked the left side of his rear bumper--smacked it hard.

In the eighth of a second between the time the Zhiguli was hit and Sam lost all control, he realized the maneuver had been so precisely executed that he wasn't up against gangsters but Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's FSB professionals. The car spun out. Its front wheel caught the soft shoulder, wavered, teetered and then rolled, skidding toward the roadblock in a shower of sparks.

Sam's face made rude contact with the windshield. The impact ripped him out of his seat belt and he caromed helplessly around the interior. He smacked into the roof panel and heard himself scream as his shoulder separated. Then, his ears filled with the cacophony of shattering metal and splintering glass, all color drained away and he could see nothing but black and white. Huge bright spots appeared in front of his eyes. Finally, as if an immense drapery were being pulled from left to right across what was left of his field of vision, he slipped into blackness and disappeared into a terrible crystal funnel of white sound.

It was dusk when Sam opened his eyes. Christ, it hurt to breathe. He groaned and flopped over onto his back. He was on the shoulder of the road. He licked his split lips and tasted blood.

Behind him, the Zhiguli rested on its crumpled roof. Vegetables were strewn about, along with pieces of balalaika and glass. Eight feet away, Pavel Baranov's body lay crumpled facedown, legs at an obscene angle, arms akimbo.

"Pavel?" Sam crawled toward the Russian. The going was slow and incredibly painful. He reached Baranov's leg and shook it. There was no response. He pulled himself alongside Baranov and rolled him onto his back by his belt.

Which is when Sam saw Baranov's open, dead eyes. And the broken cigarette stuffed into his mouth. And the bullet holes in the Russian's forehead. He forgot his own pain, raised Pavel's head and cradled it in his lap. His hands and trousers became wet with blood and skull fragments and brain matter. He brushed tobacco strands from between the Russian's lips.

Sam sat there for seconds, rocking the lifeless man in his arms. It came to him, in the way cruel memories intrude, that he'd spent a small part of his 19th birthday 25 or so miles southwest of Da Nang, holding the shredded body of a lance corporal in much the same way he was holding Pavel Baranov now. But then Sam's training took over, and he checked the Russian's corpse only to discover what he knew he'd find: Pavel still wore his gold Rolex, but the envelope with its precious page was gone. He ran his left hand up inside his jacket. The copy was gone, too.

Sam realized, even in his present state, that its disappearance didn't prove anything about the document's bona fides--or Pavel Baranov's.

But then, Sam Waterman realized something else. He remembered Pavel Baranov hadn't known they were going to Zagorsk. No one knew his destination or his route. Until, that is, he'd cabled every single detail to Langley.

"He's about to serve up a Lubyanka breakfast," Baranov said. "A cigarette and a bullet."