The Take(50)

He thought of the effort required to assemble it and a wave of fatigue overtook him. He leaned back in his chair and looked out the window. The rain had continued unabated since the day before. His view gave north to the center of the city. When the air was clear and the sun shining, he had a direct view of the new business district and could count the Stalin skyscrapers set in a ring around the city. Today, the rain made it impossible to see anything except the dirt caked on his window.

He looked once again at the business card and questioned his decision to send Valentina Asanova to Paris. Was he getting himself into more trouble or doing what any patriot would? He sat straighter. He had never been a man who shirked his duty. He would never have succeeded in the old regime, when devotion to the Communist Party demanded a uniform, unwavering, and often blithely ignorant obedience. He was a man of his time, doing what any smart, ambitious, and patriotic man of his time should do.

It had all begun with a rumor of a clandestine meeting that had taken place almost thirty years in the past. Borodin, a major at the time, had been quick to dismiss it. A man in his position trafficked in hearsay at his peril. Then, a year later, a second source, independent from the first, repeated it. This time with a crucial detail added. The meeting had taken place at a dacha north of Moscow in the month of September, days after the momentous visit. More importantly, the dacha belonged to General Ivan Truchin, one of the first high-ranking officers to denounce the old Soviet regime.

The smart response was to say “Nonsense” or “Rubbish” and slam the door on such dangerous talk. But Borodin was at heart distrustful. It was in his nature to ask “What if?” or, better, “Why not?” Where others sought out the good in people, he was inclined to seek the ill, or at least the duplicitous. He was nothing more than the product of his training.

Though barely a teenager when the alleged meeting had taken place, he remembered the time well. It was the era of glasnost and perestroika. The West termed the words “opening” and “restructuring.” Borodin preferred “capitulation” and “destruction.”

The great Soviet ship launched amid blood and tumult in 1918 by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin and his band of Bolshevik revolutionaries was sinking. Chaos reigned. It was every man for himself. Even the rats were fleeing the ship.

Borodin searched for his phone and for the thousandth time—no, the ten thousandth—looked at the picture. There they were, the biggest threats Mother Russia had ever known, all standing within feet of one another. Gorbachev, Reagan, and the worst of the three.

And so a meeting of this nature was possible. Perhaps more so because no one would have had reason to suspect that anyone would show an interest in such an unimportant man.

Borodin had put out feelers to get a stronger sense of the rumor’s veracity. Again, he had been careful not to betray an unhealthy interest. If anyone inquired, he could respond with a clear conscience that he was only doing his job. Anything more could quite literally be fatal.

He had reached out to veterans of the secret world long retired. He had couched his questions elliptically and with purposeful vagueness. Do you remember a time when something unexpectedly went wrong with one of your operations? Did you ever feel as if someone were thwarting your efforts? Perhaps the suspicion that an invisible hand was hindering progress? Or if not hindering it, doing too little to help?

The answers had trickled in over the course of a year. In no instance had any of the retired officers pointed a finger at who might have been responsible. Certainly, no names had been mentioned. They, too, knew how to be purposefully vague.

Still, it had been enough.

By then, Borodin had risen to the rank of colonel. His seniority granted him unfettered access to the SVR’s archives. He needed no one’s permission to examine the case files involved, nor was he required to leave something so damning as a signature that might later attest to his interest. Under no circumstance did he reveal his intentions to even his most trusted colleagues.

One by one, he had drawn the operational records. He was patient. He allowed time to pass between his inquiries. A month or two went by between trips to the archives. (The SVR was, and remained, hopelessly backlogged in transferring its paper files to digital.) One by one, he had corroborated the veterans’ statements.

More importantly, he had been able to spot a common thread. Over and over, the same name had appeared in each file. Earlier, he had been a deputy case officer. Later, he had acted as the case officer in charge. And later still, as a divisional chief.

The conclusion was inescapable.

Still, he had lacked the incontrovertible evidence necessary to make such a monstrous accusation. He had only come upon it later, after learning that his newest agent in the U.S. capital had a brother who toiled as an archivist at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Again, he had chosen misdirection to guard against detection. There had been no stealing of classified case files. Instead, it had been Borodin’s idea to have him search a little known corner of the archives: the CIA’s commendation reports, many of which dealt with the awarding of medals to foreign agents in place. It was common practice for espionage agencies the world over to present their operatives, or “Joes,” a medal along with a written commendation during clandestine meets with a case officer, if only to take back both afterward. Spies were by definition insecure and unbalanced. A medal, a commendation, a promotion in imaginary rank, boosted their morale immeasurably.