…’ He paused, trying to discern a reaction from the other man. He thought there was a slight flush to the man’s face but he wasn’t sure. He pressed on: ‘So now you be honest with me! That’s how you think of me, isn’t it?’
There was a pause and then Bowden said: ‘I guess something like that.’
He couldn’t let the American get away. ‘Not something like that: exactly like that. So to have answered no would not have been the right reply, would it?’
‘Let’s move on,’ urged Bowden uneasily. ‘You approached our people, in the beginning. Offering stuff. And approached us again, asking to come over, when you got the recall notice. So why did you say you were unwilling to come across? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘It makes every sense!’ disputed Levin. ‘I’ve abandoned a daughter, whom I love. That’s why I am unwilling. If she had been here the answer would have been the opposite.’
Bowden nodded, making some sort of entry against the notebook log. He said: ‘You’ve come over to our side now, Yevgennie. Decided to settle in America?’
‘Yes.’
‘So how come you don’t regret spying against the United States? That’s what you said. When you were asked…’
‘I know what I was asked,’ interrupted Levin, mentally ticking off the man’s uncertainties, every one of which he had so far anticipated. ‘I was being honest again. At the time I carried out those activities I was an officer of the KGB, properly performing my assigned functions. So why should I regret it? Again, I was trying to answer in complete honesty.’
Bowden made another entry. The American was bending over the records, not bothering – or not wanting – to look up at Levin. He jabbed several times at the query sheet with the tip of his pencil, and said: ‘There’s something here that we don’t understand at all. Not at all…’ He came up at last, appearing to seek some facial reaction from the Russian. ‘You said you imagine you’ll regret coming across.’
‘But of course I will!’ said Levin, as if he found the query surprising. ‘I’ll never stop being a Russian. Thinking like a Russian. Feeling like a Russian. I might have become disillusioned with it and what I was being called upon to do but there’s always going to be a part of me uncertain if I made the right decision by coming across. And it’s a regret that is going to be a very positive attitude until I get Natalia here, with us.’
‘Disillusioned?’ picked up Bowden. ‘You say you’ve come across because you’re disillusioned but you said on the polygraph that you’ve done it for money.’
‘And then I made it clear that was not the primary cause,’ came back Levin confidently. ‘I had to answer yes – the honest answer – because that was the order in which the question was asked.’
Bowden sat nodding but Levin was unsure whether the gesture was in acceptance of the reply. The American said: ‘There were some responses to questions about truth and honesty that just worry the hell out of me.’
‘Let’s get the sequence right,’ insisted Levin. ‘It was honesty first, then truth. I replied no when I was asked if I considered myself an honest man because it was the right reply. How can I consider myself honest when I have betrayed my country? Which is what I have done and will always carry, as a burden. But I do intend to cooperate honestly if there is a proper debriefing. And I was accurate when I replied to the question about truth. We are trained not to tell the truth, you and I: to lie, if the occasion or the need arises. But again I intend to tell the truth if we debrief.’ Levin wondered if the perspiration would be visible against the back of his jacket, when he stood: trying to reduce the risk, he leaned forward slightly, to enable air to get between himself and the back of the chair.
‘Why did you find the polygraph difficult?’ Bowden snapped the question out sharply.
Remembering that the room was doubtless wired and that there would be a recording of his conversation with the technician, Levin said: ‘Before the test began, the operator asked me if I were familiar with the polygraph. I wasn’t and said so. I did not like being strapped in as I was and I did not like the restriction of yes or no answers. It’s too easy to convey a misleading impression by giving an absolutely accurate answer to a wrongly phrased question.’
Bowden’s head was moving again but Levin was still unsure whether or not it was in acceptance of what he was saying. The American said: ‘Why won’t you cooperate with the counter-intelligence services of other countries?’
‘I’m not setting myself up as a performing monkey,’ said Levin at once. ‘When I told Proctor I was being recalled he immediately suggested I should return to Moscow and act there for the CIA. Quite apart from the fact that it would not have been possible – because I believed I was being taken back for investigation – I refused. It would have meant switching to a different agency, spreading my identity: just like cooperating with other counter-intelligence would risk my being further exposed…’ He hesitated. ‘Russia – and the KGB – never forgive anyone who defects: you know that! There’s always an attempt at retribution, as an example to others.’ The ache now was beyond tension, settling into a draining fatigue not just from the pressure but from the effort of staying ahead of that pressure.
‘You had a lot of difficulty at the end, about identifying KGB personnel?’
‘The same difficulty as always: the phrasing of the questions and the insistence upon simple answers,’ Levin fought back. The people I know at the United Nations are KGB personnel. Agents. Those I think I know outside are not personnel. I think they are suborned spies. I don’t know how it is in your service, but in Russia we differentiate between agents and spies.’
‘American, you mean!’
‘That’s what I think.’
‘Think!’ qualified Bowden.
He’s taken the bait, thought Levin. He said: ‘I do not have a name. Just scraps: bits of operational detail. It may be impossible to trace backwards.’
‘Operational detail!’ seized Bowden. ‘You mean you think there’s a spy in the FBI?’
‘No,’ said Levin.
‘Where then?’
‘The CIA.’
Bowden remained hunched over the polygraph material for a long time, his head actually moving as he went over the tracings and the queries and now these responses. He looked up at last with the familiar smile in place. ‘You know what I think, Yevgennie?’
‘What?’ asked Levin, the euphoria already beginning to move through him.
‘I think you’re too fucking honest for the stupid machine.’
‘You mean you believe me?’
‘Welcome to America,’ said Bowden.
‘Thank you,’ said Levin. It would be natural to let the relief show and he did.
‘There’s one thing,’ said Bowden.
‘What?’
‘You shouldn’t have lied about masturbation,’ smiled Bowden. ‘Everybody jerks off. Everybody lies about it, too.’
Sergei Kapalet was a classic KGB emplacement within a Soviet legation in a Western capital. Holding the rank of colonel within the service, he was described upon the French diplomatic list as a driver at the Soviet Embassy in Paris. It was a position low enough to be ignored by French counter-intelligence yet one that gave him the excuse and the facility to drive at will around the city. Which he had done constantly since his posting eighteen months earlier, preparing for this small but essential part in the most destructive operation ever devised by the KGB against the CIA. His job was to insert a few pieces into the whole of a very complicated jigsaw. For him to have known all the details would have put at risk the entire operation if he were detected as an intelligence operative, to avoid which was the purpose of the rehearsals. Kapalet drove and drove and drove again around the arrondissements of the city – amusing himself by going first around Le Kremlin area – until he was familiar with every avenue and boulevard. And during every journey he was alert for surveillance which would have warned him he was suspected by the French. It never happened. A superbly trained operative, Kapalet did not rely solely upon a car, but became an expert on the metro as well, journeying as far as Mairie des Lilas and Eglise de Pantin and Pont de Levallois Becon and memorizing all the transfer stations in between, again, all the time, trying to spot any pursuit. There wasn’t any here, either.