Deep Cover (2 page)

Almost certainly Grigorenko had been told it was Rykov who had kept him from taking Beria's post. Rykov knew the persuasions Yashin must have used:
The choice was between you and Tolubchev. Khrushchev consulted Rykov, and Rykov put Tolubchev's name forward, obviously because Rykov knows he can manipulate Tolubchev. When Tolubchev is gone Rykov will take his place.
As a matter of fact it was all true except that no one had ever seriously considered Grigorenko for the post. Even Marshal Zhukov, who had always favored the military, had not endorsed Grigorenko. If you sought a captain for your chess team you did not seek him among those who did not understand the moves of the game. Grigorenko was a satisfactory bureaucrat but when it came to strategy and decision his mind was rudimentary.

It was natural that Yashin and Grigorenko would try to put Rykov away: that was why they were here today, he was certain. The fact-finding visit was only a smoke screen. Yashin and Grigorenko needed to be able to demonstrate that they had taken the trouble to examine Amergrad on the ground,
which was something no other high officials had done. Once they returned to the Kremlin they would be in a position to spread any lies they chose and there would be no one to dispute them. Between Grigorenko's GRU network and Yashin's control of sixty Communist Parties the two men carried enough weight to persuade the shaky ministerial cabinet to abandon the Amergrad project and put Viktor Rykov on the shelf—give him a listless series of outpost appointments until retirement.

… Following leisurely, the troop lorry was a faint heavy shape through the limousine's dust. Rykov lit a brown cigarette and reflected on his choice of weapons. The Zis climbed a steady slope and from the summit they overlooked a surprising green valley locked away from the world, a bowl ringed by thick tall trees.

“The forest hides us from the casual eyes of nomadic herders. We have nine hundred square kilometers inside the security wall. There is only the one gate and we patrol the wall with guards and dog squads, but there's also an electronic detection net. You can't get within two hundred meters without tripping off an alarm.”

“You're always thorough,” General Grigorenko conceded.

Fyodor Yashin said, “No one denies the months of routine and the endless careful planning. But the complexity of it—a secret isn't a secret when more than one person knows it. If two people know, it's going to be known by others, sooner or later, and if it's known by hundreds in the first place, you can't keep it secret for any time at all.”

The road took them down through the trees past a wooden sentry watchtower. Yashin said, “It ought to make a superb detention camp.” They were baiting him but Rykov did not rise to it.

At the roadblock they had to step out of the car and hand their papers to a sergeant while a soldier searched the car. Grigorenko muttered an oath and Rykov said, “An inconvenience, but I can hardly make exceptions to my own standing orders, can I.” Finally the sergeant clicked his heels and let them pass.

Grigorenko spoke irritably:

“Don't you think your precautions are excessive?”

“We don't want anyone coming inside who's likely to forget himself and speak Russian to the Illegals.”

“They've heard Russian before. They
are
Russians.”

“That's what we're teaching them to forget.”

Yashin's eyes flicked him. “And what if they forget too well?”

The wall was twelve feet high and crested by electrified barbed wire. The Zis stopped by a barracks and the woman driver opened the door for them. “We change cars here,” Rykov said. “Your luggage will be brought along.” He took them past the checkpoint, through the gate. Between the outer and inner walls they showed papers to a guard in an olive-drab American uniform with an Eisenhower jacket. A yellow Chevrolet waited, tended by a man in denim jacket and a greasy yellow cap; the car had an Arizona license plate and a “Tucson Yellow Taxi” decal on the door. Rykov put the visitors in the back seat and climbed into the front beside Andrei, twisted around with his left arm across the back of the seat and said, “I'll have to remind you, please, not to speak to anyone we see along the way.”

Yashin said, “My objective is to interview some of your people. You know that.”

“We've got to keep you separated from them. You'll conduct your interviews through soundproofed glass. There'll be simultaneous interpreters—you'll see the men and women you're talking to, but they won't hear your voice. Do you speak English?”

“Only in self-defense.” Yashin did not smile at his little joke.

Rykov said, “The Illegals you'll meet here are the survivors. We've screened out nine out of ten before they get this far. You understand we can't afford the slightest slip at this stage. Once they come here from the primary training centers they need speak only a single word of Russian, even in their sleep, and they're given the sack. I must ask you to humor my regulations.”

The taxi took them through the woods on a four-lane stretch of highway divided centrally by a grass strip. Large yellow signs in English announced PAVEMENT NARROWS—EXPRESSWAY ENDS 1000 FEET, and they bumped past a row of flaming oilpots onto a temporary macadam surface full of chuckholes. They turned abruptly into a district of warehouses and automobile junkyards and repair shops, a utility plant, another patch of woods and a street of pleasant small houses with trees arching the sidewalks. A man stood in a driveway washing down a Buick with a garden hose, and a cocker spaniel cavorted on the sloping lawn. The house was all on one level and had large picture windows. They passed a small U.S.
POST OFFICE
van and a slow-cruising police car with a red dome light and came to an intersection with filling stations—Mobil, Texaco, Union 76—on three of its four corners. The traffic signal suspended on cables above the middle of the intersection turned from yellow to red and Rykov got out of the car to pick up a newspaper from the unattended corner stand. He left a five-cent piece beside the iron weight that kept the newspapers from blowing away and returned to the car before the traffic light had turned. “The Tucson
Daily Star.
We get it through Tass. It's about ten days late, but that hardly matters. Yesterday we developed the major news stories from it and designed our radio and television broadcasts around it.”

Traffic in a wide street sucked them into its flow. The curbs were lined with parking meters. Rykov pointed out Regan's Drugs, the movie theater, Woolworth's, John's Men's Shop, a beauty salon, real-estate and insurance offices. A red light halted them beside an open-fronted lunch counter and Johnnie Ray was singing “Walkin' My Baby Back Home” on the jukebox. They went on past a Safeway Market with an enormous asphalt car park and General Grigorenko said, “You don't see as many motorcars on the streets of Leningrad. What was the cost of this?”

Rykov pointed off to the left. “The nursery school. We allow Illegals with children into the program if the children
are younger than eighteen months. They're raised in English.”

Yashin's wintry expression never changed. “One might suspect the Americans grow enough of their own.”

The taxi slid to the curb by a big Spanish stucco edifice,
FEDERAL OFFICE BUILDING
engraved in concrete above the entrance. Rykov preceded them through the revolving door and saw the general give the device a narrow look full of nervous distrust. Yashin gave the surroundings no more attention than he would have paid a Moscow worker's flat. Andrei trotted to the elevator bank and inserted a key and the car took them to the fifth floor.

“Your quarters are at the rear. We'll try to anticipate your needs but you'll have to regard yourselves as confined in quarantine.”

“I'm sure it's all quite necessary,” Yashin said.

Rykov took them into his office and closed the door. Andrei arranged chairs, and from the way General Grigorenko's eyes followed Andrei around the room it was evident Grigorenko didn't like his being there, but if Yashin could bring a witness Rykov was entitled to the same privilege according to the rules of protocol. Rykov pressed a button under the lip of his desk and sat back. “We can begin right away if you like.”

“By all means,” said Yashin.

An old man brought in a large tray and set it down and left the room. Chilled glasses of vodka, dishes of smoked whitefish on bread, and sour pickles. Andrei passed them around.

Rykov settled his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers. “You'll want a general briefing, but first let's clear the air. When you return to the Kremlin there will be nothing to prevent you from remembering a great many ugly things that did not happen here. You might try to persuade the Politburo that my operation here is slipshod and worthless, nothing but a danger to the Soviet Union and a grave drain on her resources. When men in your position make such statements, rebuttals from men in my position mean little.”

Yashin murmured, “You forget your superior. What about Tolubchev?”

“Naturally his assurances would be discounted because ultimately the responsibility for Amergrad is his. He authorized it and he has no choice but to defend it. Who would believe him?”

The narrow face did not change. “You have a lively imagination.”

“Have I.”

“What do you want, Comrade—my assurances of support?”

“Only your assurances of an open skepticism. I never ask the impossible.”

“Show us what you have to offer. Then we'll see.”

“In a moment. It remains to be said that the state security files are at my disposal at all times.”

Yashin didn't stir. It was Grigorenko who stiffened. “You're threatening us with blackmail?”

“You? Hardly.”

“Never mind,” Yashin said. He appeared remote, detached. He understood well enough. The government was unsteady, the post-Stalin purges had stripped the top levels of functionaries, and those who remained were a meager cadre intent on training a new generation to fill the bureaucracy's vacancies. Yashin and his comrades could not afford the loss of further Party executives. Yet Rykov's threat was explicit: destroy Rykov and you risk destroying men whose services are vital to the Soviet Union. The ammunition waited in his NKVD files.

He was offering Yashin a simple trade and making it clear he was not asking for support, only indifference.

Yashin lit his pipe. He had not conceded yet. “We'll see,” he said again. “You may proceed.”

Rykov sat back. “Andrei?”

Andrei clasped his hands behind him and assumed a gentle
ex cathedra
manner. “The first group of trainees is to matriculate in three weeks' time. They'll be seeded in at discreet intervals over a period of eighteen or twenty months. These
agents may not be called on to act for many years, and in the meantime their whole concern will be to behave like Americans. That's why their training here has to be exhaustive, and incidentally expensive. Once in place they will have no contact with active Soviet field agents. Their instructions will come from Moscow—directly, without the use of established
rezidentsii
or safe-houses.

“When and if a Moscow Control is sent out to activate them, he'll have to make contact without the use of any ritualistic devices like codes and countersigns—they can't be expected to remember obscure passwords over a span of ten or twenty years.

“When contact is made the procedure will be simple. Control will address the agent by his real name, his Russian name, and he'll supply the names of both the agent's parents. In turn the agent will give him the full names of all four of his grandparents. Any enemy agent who gets deep enough into things to learn those names and their proper use will know so much about us that nothing would add to the damage already done.

“No agent is to take into his confidence anyone outside his own immediate cell, even if it's someone he thinks he met here at Amergrad. If he's not a member of the same cell he's to be treated as if he's a real American. The only communication between cells will be between cell leaders and of course agents and leaders will know only what they need to know for the execution of their own missions.”

Andrei shifted his stance and his voice changed slightly. “They're going to be seeded into a place called Tucson, in the Southwestern desert. Population around fifty thousand. Industries, at the moment, cattle, copper mining, tourism. The town provides services and transport for the surrounding agricultural and mineral districts.”

“Cowboy country,” Grigorenko said. “Why?”

“Our analyses indicate Tucson will become an important defense center within a few years. It's in the same part of the country as the aircraft and missile plants in California and Utah, it's not far from the Alamogordo test range, the nuclear
laboratories at Los Alamos, and the Nevada nuclear testing sites. It's four hundred miles inland from the nearest coastline, which makes it invulnerable to naval air attack, and the weather and topography encourage year-round aircraft and missile operations. The Army has a sophisticated artillery and electronics testing facility nearby at Fort Huachuca and in Tucson itself there are two Air Force bases—Davis Monthan, part of the Strategic Air Command, and Marana, a pilot-training field. We feel Tucson will become a vitally important base for intercontinental bombers and long-range rockets armed with nuclear warheads, as well as a center for research and weapons factories.”

Yashin said, “Of course that's an opinion. You can't be absolutely certain it will develop that way.”

He was talking to Rykov, and Rykov answered him: “We deal with probabilities, indications, suggestions.”

“Circumstantial evidence.”

“Yes. When you've got enough of it and it all points in the same direction, you can be fairly sure you're on the right track. But absolute certainty? No. That's beyond our power.”