It became rapidly clear to him that subterfuge was not a requirement. Lonetree appeared to immediately figure out who he was, and wasn’t, and since he knew very well who Lonetree was, the game of hide-and-seek was unnecessary. For this reason Yefimov also decided not to dwell for too long on the cliché of Indians in conflict with the white man. He knew his bosses were hoping for confirmation of the Leninist interpretation of American society that maintained disaffected minorities were anxious to overthrow the yokes of their capitalist oppressors, and in the reports he filed he told them what they wanted to hear. But these were exaggerations. To stress this theme, he felt, would confuse Lonetree and had the potential to jeopardize the case. The key to Lonetree’s cooperation, he realized, was not his grudge against Western society but his obsession with Violetta.
In his meetings with counterintelligence Yefimov had been instructed to ask questions that would enable them to identify American intelligence officers working behind the facade of the embassy under the guise of diplomats. CI generally had a pretty good idea who the CIA agents were, but there were always a few people they had difficulty identifying, and Lonetree was in a position to help them confirm their suspicions.
Then there were the other areas CI wanted him to cover, such as updating and detailing renovated spaces inside the embassy; information about the security systems (where they were located and how they functioned); and data on embassy personnel (the location of their work spaces, the hours they kept, their personal habits and characteristics) that would expand the KGB’s recruitment dossiers.
Ideally an agent inside an embassy could also do things like procure secret documents, but in this regard Yefimov had been instructed it would be a mistake to task the Marine beyond his means. Each employee in the embassy had his own circle of issues he dealt with, and if Lonetree suddenly started asking questions about matters that were none of his business, or attempted to acquire documents not normally available to him, it could raise suspicions that would give him away.
Something a Marine guard could do, however, particularly when patrolling the embassy by himself at night, was install listening devices, and Yefimov did hope that he would be able to get Lonetree to follow the example of the guard recruited at the British Embassy years ago. After describing an important meeting room in the embassy, he was asked to bring a lightbulb from the chandelier to his handler. KGB technicians reconstructed it, planting a microphone inside, and the bulb was returned to the guard, who replaced it. The ruse worked perfectly. Not until the British began to realize that information was somehow being leaked, and the walls and ceiling and floor were torn apart, was the bug in the lightbulb discovered. But when Yefimov asked Lonetree if he would be willing to do something similar, he balked at the suggestion, and rather than pressure him, Yefimov had backed off.
It would be up to others to analyze and decide on the ultimate worth of the information supplied by Lonetree, but from what Yefimov could tell, a greater satisfaction was derived from the fact that the security services had an American agent in their control than from any particular piece of information Lonetree delivered. This was true on the lower levels of the KGB, where at this stage of the Cold War there had been so many defections to the West that the recruitment of an American was perceived as giving “the finger” to the CIA, as well as among KGB higher-ups, who regarded Lonetree as a major ideological coup. KGB Chairman Chebrikov was receiving daily reports on the progress of the operation, and would brag at various intelligence and political functions how “under the toughest working conditions,” a security guard at the American Embassy was doing KGB work.
Much to Yefimov’s dismay, certain members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) were also aware of the case, and had decided to become involved. This was a time of economic and military uncertainty within the Central Committee, and a growing number of people were concerned about the future of Communism and looking for confirmation that the Western democracies were in an even greater state of decay. What better proof could there be, some of these apparatchiks decided, than for a Marine, an esteemed member of the enemy’s military elite, to become a Russian agent? And so they made requests that came to Yefimov in the form of orders to ask Lonetree questions about matters that no Marine guard would have knowledge of, or that were beyond his intellectual ability to answer.
Yefimov was not in a position to argue, and dutifully he asked Lonetree if he agreed with Marx that objective future historical developments were on the side of Communism, and what his thoughts were about President Reagan’s position on medium-range missiles in Europe. But privately he fumed at the interference of these nonprofessionals in the operation. And when the word came down that he should ask Lonetree if he would be willing to seek political asylum, Yefimov almost rebelled. He knew what they were thinking—that Lonetree would make for a great propaganda exhibition, paraded before the cameras, and then given a consultant’s position at one of the intelligence schools. But he knew too that this was dilettantism. In any respectable intelligence operation, political asylum was a last recourse, offered only to foreign agents who found themselves on the border of catastrophe. Certainly he recognized the political benefits of defection, but he also knew that what this would be saying to the other side was that Lonetree’s propaganda value was worth more than his spying activities.
This was what Yefimov had been afraid of: that interference from bosses, who wanted more from Lonetree than he could logically produce, would create tensions that would complicate the operation. And when Lonetree was transferred to Vienna, things proceeded downhill at an accelerating rate for more bureaucratic reasons.
Just as an interservice rivalry existed between the CIA and the FBI in the United States, a similar competition thrived in the Soviet Union between the Second Chief Directorate, whose responsibilities were internal security and who conducted counterintelligence operations, and the First Chief Directorate, whose activities took place on foreign soil and were oriented toward intelligence gathering. The First thought the personnel in the Second were unsophisticated and possessed limited creativity, while the Second thought those in the First were overconfident and untrustworthy, as proved by the larger number of traitors from their ranks.
When Lonetree was still in Moscow, top officials in Intelligence had heard that Counterintelligence had successfully recruited an American Marine, and Intelligence made inquiries, believing the information he was providing might be of use to them. But the Second had been protective of their agent and refused to reply. Even after Lonetree left town and was stationed in a foreign city, they had been reluctant to pass him along to the other service because a lot of effort and money had been expended, his recruitment looked good on their reports, and they knew that once he was in the hands of Intelligence, the very top bosses would forget who had recruited him.
While this internal bickering was going on, Yefimov had been flying into and out of Vienna and continuing to handle the agent. But he could see that Lonetree was becoming increasingly discontent with his role. He was missing meetings. He was not responding to requests. He was drinking heavily, a sure sign of stress. And Yefimov felt he understood the nature of the problem: Lonetree was a fish on a hook, but the worm was gone. Letters from and pictures of Violetta weren’t enough.