Trinity factor, p.6
Trinity Factor, page 6
“So I’m told,” the American officer said softly. He turned, took his wet raincoat from where it was draped over a chair, nodded to Woodsworthe and then Faircloth, and headed across the room for the door. “Let’s go, sergeant,” he snapped.
Lovelace shook hands with Faircloth and smiled. “Nice knowing you, major,” he said, and he turned and followed the colonel out into the corridor. They headed at a brisk pace toward the stairs.
“What’s it going to be, colonel—jail or reassignment?” Lovelace asked as they walked. At this moment he really didn’t give a damn; he was merely curious.
But the colonel didn’t say a thing until they had gone downstairs, signed out with the guards, and climbed into a staff car parked outside.
Before they pulled away from the curb he looked over at Lovelace. “You’re one amazing sonofabitch,” he said without anger.
“So I’ve been told,” Lovelace said, and as he lit a cigarette, the colonel slammed the car in gear and they took off at breakneck speed along the nearly deserted streets.
After they had gone a couple of blocks, the colonel again glanced over at Lovelace and he shook his head. “Before I get you out to Heathrow, I’ve got to brief you.”
“Heathrow?” Lovelace asked, stunned. He had expected some kind of retribution for his latest caper, but this was coming a little too fast.
“There’s a plane waiting for you, but listen up now. I’m only going to tell you this once, and don’t bother asking me any questions, because I don’t have any of the answers.”
“What about my things from my flat?”
“Already taken care of,” the colonel said with some exasperation, and before Lovelace could interrupt again, he continued. “You have been promoted to captain, effective immediately. That’s under direct verbal orders from President Roosevelt himself.”
Lovelace sat back, his stomach fluttering.
“You’re being assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, under a General Leslie R. Groves, in Washington. He’s Army Corps of Engineers. Heads something called the Manhattan District Project. You’re to report directly to him, and no one else, the moment your plane lands.”
None of this was making any sense. The Army Corps built roads and bridges and dams. What did the CIC have to do with it? But before he could ask the dozen questions that had immediately come into his mind, the colonel was continuing.
“Your assignment is classified top secret, captain. From this point on, you will not discuss it with anyone, except for General Groves. And that includes me.”
7
MOSCOW
General Ivan Yenikeev looked ashen, and when Runkov was ushered into his office the old man got slowly to his feet. There was a thin bead of perspiration on his upper lip, something Runkov had been noticing more of lately as the pressures of being chief administrator of the GRU wore thin.
Yenikeev was, after all, an administrator and nothing more. He had no stomach for the finer details of many of the military secret service’s projects. Yet his very innocuousness apparently was the reason Stalin had selected him—it was expected that sooner or later Yenikeev would seriously bungle his job and that the GRU would be phased out of existence, probably to be swallowed up by Merkulov’s NKGB. It was a typical game of Soviet politics.
“Good morning, comrade general,” Runkov said, coming across the room to the wide desk. Although he had not gotten much sleep last night, he felt good this morning.
“What’s this … what in hell is going on?” Yenikeev demanded, barely able to control his anger.
“Whatever are you talking about, general?” Runkov asked, looking directly into the man’s eyes. He genuinely did not know what his boss was talking about. He had been summoned from his office downstairs a few minutes ago. No explanations.
“This business with Valkyrie, and networks in the United States, and …” The general broke off, unable to complete the sentence.
“Assassinations?” Runkov finished it for him.
“I’m ordering you to cease and desist, major. This time you have gone too far. Entirely too far. They are our allies.”
How the old fool had found out about the project so quickly was a source of mystery for the moment, but Runkov was going to put an end to it quickly. He reached out and picked up the telephone from the general’s desk. “May I?” he asked, and he gave the operator the extension number for his own office.
Yenikeev said nothing, and a moment later Doronkin answered.
“Vladimir, bring up the envelope lying on my desk, immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, and Runkov hung up the phone.
“In just a moment, general, everything will become clear to you.”
“I am ordering you, major, to abandon this insane project, whatever its exact nature is,” the general said, straightening up.
Runkov just smiled as he looked the man straight in the eye, and the two of them stood there like that for a minute or two, until Doronkin arrived at the door with a plain white envelope.
Runkov moved to the door, took the envelope, and dismissed his aide. Coming back to the general’s desk, he opened the envelope, withdrew a letter, and handed it over. “I think you should read that, comrade general.”
Yenikeev took the letter, which was stamped top and bottom, Most Secret, and read it, his face turning white by degrees.
Maj. Dmitrevich Runkov is acting on my behalf in a most secret project of supreme importance to this government, and the war effort. He is to be given the utmost of cooperation at all times, with no questions asked. This matter shall not be documented through normal channels, nor shall it be discussed with any person at any time.
[SIGNED]
Joseph Stalin
Marshal
The general looked up at Runkov, again at the letter, and then slowly sat down. He handed the letter back and shook his head. “Monstrous,” he said, half under his breath.
When he looked up again, there was fear in his eyes. “Get out,” he said softly. “I don’t want to see or hear of you or of this again.”
“As you wish, general,” Runkov said. He saluted, turned on his heel, and left the office, taking the elevator back downstairs.
He folded the fake letter he had written himself, stuffed it back in its envelope, and put it in his shirt pocket beneath his tunic.
Yenikeev, Merkulov, and Beria, three parts of a triangle, all wishing for the failure of this project, with Stalin at the wings waiting with a promotion for whoever was victorious. It was another of the games of Soviet politics that Runkov had learned well in his long career. All three of them had the power, but he had the cunning and the ruthlessness.
Back in his office Runkov summoned Doronkin inside and, while he was taking off his tunic and hanging it up, he began outlining his instructions.
“First of all, any word yet from communications about Valkyrie?”
“They’ve apparently lost contact with him. Temporarily, I’m told.”
Runkov stopped what he was doing, and turned to look at his assistant. “What?” he said, flabbergasted.
“From what I’m told it has become normal for the man not to check in once a week. It has been three weeks now since his last transmission.”
Runkov cursed himself for his own inefficiency. He should have known, but he had been too damned busy over the past months. He tried to think. It was very possible the man had been exposed, or perhaps Canaris’ entire staff had fallen. They knew it was coming. Which left them only one way.
“Then we’ll have to use a more direct means for summoning him,” Runkov said, sitting down behind his desk. He pulled a pad of paper toward him, wrote a three-word message, tore the sheet off, and handed it to Doronkin. “See that this is coded and put on the C Channel for Berlin immediately.”
Doronkin looked at the message, and his eyes widened. “But, major …” he started to say. Runkov cut him off.
“It is the only way. If the man refuses to answer his queries, this will bring him out of the woodwork.”
“This could mean his death. The C Channel code has been broken by the Germans. They will understand that we have an agent in Berlin. They will be watching for him.”
“Yes,” Runkov said, with no satisfaction. “But if he cannot get himself out of this mess, then he’s not the man for our project, is he?”
Doronkin shook his head in wonderment. “Anything else?”
“Yes, quite a lot, actually,” Runkov said. “But get that message out first, and then come back here. We’ve got a lot of work to do, including finding him a wife. The Americans will expect it.”
When Doronkin had left, Runkov rolled up his shirt sleeves, opened the file folder marked Valkyrie, and began reading.
His real name was Aleksandr Petrovich Badim, and he had been born in Moscow in 1912. His mother had died giving him birth, and his father had been killed five years later in the Revolution.
After the war, the teachers in the state-operated orphanage in which Badim had been placed came to the realization that the young man was quite extraordinary. Perhaps even a genius.
He had a facility for languages, and by the time he was ten could speak fluent German, Polish, English, and French, besides his native tongue. He also was quite good with mathematics and engineering. For a time he was the pride of the school, his teachers making it almost their hobby to discover at what level they could stump him. By the time he was fourteen he was already devouring college-level texts in three languages and he came at last to the attention of the State Security apparatus.
As early as 1931, Stalin had correctly surmised that the defeated Germany would, in the not-too-distant future, rise again as a world power. Adolf Hitler and his brownshirts were going to be a force to be reckoned with.
He had ordered his security people to begin setting up an agent network in Germany, and if at all possible to infiltrate the building Nazi party.
To this purpose Badim, among others, had been selected because of his brilliance, and because of his near-perfect German, and he was placed in a special school outside Moscow. For two years he was intensively trained there in espionage, politics, warfare, and weaponry, and proved to be a very apt pupil.
In 1934, when he was twenty-two, he was smuggled into Germany, where he was given a complete German identity—parents who had been killed in an accident, school records at the University in Gottingen, and a brief work record in Munich. Immediately he joined the Nazi party, as well as the army, and within a couple of years had gone through officers’ school and had become a lieutenant in the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service.
From that day forward Badim had sent regular intelligence reports back to the Soviet Union, sometimes transmitting directly, and sometimes passing the information through intermediaries.
More than once he had almost been discovered, but each time the person or persons who were about to expose him turned up dead, or simply disappeared.
Over the past two years his reports had come less and less frequently, but the ones that did arrive were of inestimable value.
At this moment, Badim was a major in the Abwehr working directly under Admiral Canaris in Berlin.
Responsibility for Badim had fallen on Runkov’s shoulders eighteen months ago, and a major portion of what the GRU knew of German military capabilities came directly from him.
Before this summer’s counteroffensive, which pushed the Nazis back from Moscow, Badim had been indispensable. But now that the tide of war had definitely changed, Badim’s presence in Germany was no longer one of absolute necessity. It was one of the reasons Runkov had suggested his name for this project, and he supposed the reason Stalin had agreed.
There was another reason Runkov had thought of Badim for this project, and that was old Admiral Canaris himself.
In the last few transmissions from Valkyrie that Runkov had personally studied, the GRU had been informed that Canaris was rapidly losing influence with Hitler. Badim had warned of Canaris’ decline and probable fall as early as six months ago.
Runkov had ordered his agent to try with any means at his disposal to hasten such a downfall. Canaris was an outstanding intelligence service administrator, and with him gone the Abwehr would sink into inefficiency. But it was a dangerous game, because when Canaris fell, so would his top aides and officers, Badim included.
Very few photographs had ever been taken of Badim. It was a security precaution that the administrators of the espionage school Badim had attended had insisted on. Most of the photos that had been taken, including school pictures from the orphanage, had been sought out and destroyed.
One photograph had been snapped, however, by a GRU agent in Berlin. It showed a young, very intense, good-looking man in the uniform of the German army, standing behind and slightly to the right of Admiral Canaris among a line of several top-ranking German officers and their aides. To the left stood Adolf Hitler himself, and from the angle of the photograph it was clear that the officers were on a reviewing stand somewhere near the Reichschancellery.
Badim was tall, towering a good half head above Canaris, had square, erect shoulders, and carried an almost aristocratic bearing and posture.
He had been perfect all along for this assignment, but now it was time for him to return home to train for an even more important job.
Runkov closed the file folder, sat back in his chair, and sighed deeply. Badim had never married. There had been no time for it, nor would it have been a wise move. A wife, for a man like Badim, would have been dangerously excessive baggage. A weak point in his armor of self-defense. At least until now.
Doronkin came into the office and gingerly laid the slip of paper with the message to Badim on the desk almost as if it was some sort of dangerous animal.
For a moment both men just looked at each other, until finally the sergeant nodded. “I waited until it went out.”
“Very good,” Runkov said, sitting forward. “It will either bring him home, or render him useless as far as we are concerned.” He smiled. “He’ll have to get out without revealing the fact he is a Russian. Would you care to take a little wager on what happens, Vladimir?”
Doronkin shook his head. “No, sir.”
“No, sir,” Runkov repeated, and he swiveled his chair so that he could look out of the window and across the courtyard toward the Bolshoi Theater. The day was bright, the sky almost completely cloudless after last night’s rain, and he pondered for a moment the project whose wheels he was setting in motion.
Badim had penetrated German security and had managed to escape detection for all these years. The work he had done for them had been brilliant, and now he deserved some kind of safe job in Moscow, away from the front line.
And yet from what little he knew about the man, he was certain that such a desk job would not be suitable. From the little that any of them knew of Badim, the man thrived on danger.
No, Runkov told himself, he would not allow himself any second thoughts about this project. No doubts. If the Americans were successful in their efforts to construct this new super weapon, they would become the ultimate power in the struggle for international realignment after the war.
It was, as he had told Stalin, a totally unacceptable position for the Soviet Union. But someday, he mused, there would come a head-to-head confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. And this project would be the front-runner. If it succeeded, the balance sheet would place them on equal footing with the Americans. If not?
He sighed and turned back to his aide.
“Is everything all right, major?” the sergeant asked, concerned. “Can I bring you something?”
Runkov smiled. Doronkin was a loyal soldier who would follow his master to the ends of the earth and beyond. Perhaps even to the top of St. Basil’s, his head also on a pike.
“I’m fine, but now we begin our work in preparation for Valkyrie.” He thought a moment, and then began ticking points off on his thick, powerful fingers. “First off, I want you to dig out the files on all female personnel in our GRU, as well as the NKVD and NKGB. She’ll have to speak perfect English, preferably the American idiom, she’ll have to be somewhere between twenty and let’s say thirty, and she’ll have to be absolutely loyal … if possible, not a native-born Russian.”
“A tall order,” Doronkin said.
“Indeed,” Runkov replied. “After you’ve brought those files here I want you to get over to my apartment and bring back a few items, and then arrange for a couple of cots to be sent up here. I have a feeling we’re going to be at this for a bit.”
He stood up and started to straighten his tie. “I’m going over to see Beria and then Merkulov, to find out exactly what kind of agent networks they already have going in the United States, and if they are producing anything. When I get back we’re going to have to put everything together. I don’t want anyone getting in Valkyrie’s way.”
“Yes, sir,” Doronkin said.
Runkov came around his desk, but before he grabbed his coat from the rack, he glanced down at the slip of paper with the message to Badim in English: VALKYRIE COME HOME. It would be enough to dislodge him. For some time the Germans had suspected there was a high-ranking spy in their midst. This message would prove it, and throw the suspicion on the Americans.
“Oh, one more thing,” he said, and Doronkin looked up. “Find me a submarine. A German submarine in good working order.”
Doronkin stared at him for a long moment, but then he nodded his head and went to the outer office, while Runkov pulled on his coat and buttoned it up. The sergeant was back a moment later with a plain white envelope.
“A messenger just came with this. Said it was for you, major.”
Runkov took the envelope and opened it. “Did he say who this was from?”
“No, sir. He just handed it to me and told me it was for you. Personally.”
Inside was a single sheet of paper, which Runkov unfolded, and for a moment his heart skipped a beat.
