As a result, the price of the U.S. wheat surplus over domestic requirements had shot up, in the certainty the Russians would after all have to buy close on 20 million tons. Too late. Through the summer, acting through French-based front companies, Moscow had already bought up futures for enough wheat to cover the deficit—and at the old, low price. They had even chartered dry-cargo shipping space through front men, then redirected the ships, which were en route to Western Europe, into Soviet ports. The affair was known in Langley as “the Sting.”
Carl Taylor rose. “Okay, Bob, I’ll go on taking happy snapshots.”
“Carl.” The DCIs voice stopped him in the doorway. “Nice pictures are not enough. By July first I want the Condors back on military deployment. Give me the best grain-figure estimates you have by the end of the month. Err, if you must, on the side of caution. And if there’s anything your boys spot that could explain the phenomenon, go back and reshoot it. Somehow we have to find out what the hell is happening to the Soviet wheat.”
President Matthews’s Condor satellites could see most things in the Soviet Union, but they could not observe Harold Lessing, one of the three first secretaries in the Commercial Section of the British Embassy in Moscow at his desk the following morning. It was probably just as well, for he would have been the first to agree he was not an edifying sight. He was pale as a sheet and feeling extremely sick.
The main embassy building of the British mission in the Soviet capital is a fine old pre-Revolution mansion facing north on Maurice Thorez Embankment, staring straight across the Moscow River at the south facade of the Kremlin wall. It once belonged to a millionaire sugar merchant in tsarist days, and was snapped up by the British soon after the Revolution. The Soviet government has been trying to get the British out of there ever since. Stalin hated the place; every morning as he rose he had to see, across the river from his private apartments, the Union Jack fluttering in the morning breeze, and it angered him greatly.
But the Commercial Section does not have the fortune to dwell in this elegant cream-and-gold mansion. It functions in a drab complex of postwar jerry-built office blocks two miles away on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, almost opposite the wedding-cake-style Ukraina Hotel. The same compound, guarded at its single gate by several watchful militiamen, contains several drab apartment buildings set aside for the flats of diplomatic personnel from a score or more of foreign embassies, and is called collectively the “Korpus Diplomatik,” or Diplomats’ Compound.
Harold Lessing’s office was on the top floor of the commercial office block. When he finally fainted at ten-thirty that bright May morning, it was the sound of the telephone he brought crashing to the carpet with him that alerted his secretary in the neighboring office. Quietly and efficiently, she summoned the commercial counselor, who had two young attachs assist Lessing, by this time groggily conscious again, out of the building, across the parking lot, and up to his own sixth-floor apartment in Korpus 6, a hundred yards away.
Simultaneously, the commercial counselor telephoned the main embassy on Maurice Thorez Embankment, informed the head of Chancery, and asked for the embassy doctor to be sent over. By noon, having examined Lessing in his own bed in his own flat, the doctor was conferring with the commercial counselor. To his surprise, the senior man cut him short and suggested they drive over to the main embassy to consult jointly with the head of Chancery. Only later did the doctor, an ordinary British general practitioner doing a three-year stint on attachment to the embassy with the rank of First Secretary, realize why the move was necessary. The head of Chancery took them all to a special room in the embassy building that was secure from wiretapping—something the Commercial Section was definitely not.
“It’s a bleeding ulcer,” the medico told the two diplomats. “He seemingly has been suffering from what he thought was an excess of acid indigestion for some weeks, even months. Put it down to strain of work and bunged down loads of antacid tablets. Foolish, really; he should have come to me.”
“Will it require hospitalization?” asked the head of Chancery, gazing at the ceiling.
“Oh yes, indeed.” said the doctor. “I think I can get him admitted here within a few hours. The local Soviet medical men are quite up to that sort of treatment.”
There was a brief silence as the two diplomats exchanged glances. The commercial counselor shook his head. Both men had the same thought; because of their need-to-know, both of them were aware of Lessing’s real function in the embassy. The doctor was not. The counselor deferred to Chancery.
“That will not be possible,” said Chancery smoothly. “Not in Lessing’s case. He’ll have to be flown to Helsinki on the afternoon shuttle. Will you ensure that he can make it?”
“But surely ...” began the doctor. Then he stopped. He realized why they had had to drive two miles to have this conversation. Lessing must be the head of the Secret Intelligence Service operation in Moscow. “Ah, yes. Well, now. He’s shocked and has lost probably a pint of blood. I’ve given him a hundred milligrams of pethidine as a tranquilizer. I could give him another shot at three this afternoon. If he’s chauffeur-driven to the airport and escorted all the way, yes, he can make Helsinki. But he’ll need immediate entry into hospital when he gets there. I’d prefer to go with him myself, just to be sure. I could be back tomorrow.”
The head of Chancery rose. “Splendid,” he pronounced. “Give yourself two days. And my wife has a list of little items she’s run short of, if you’d be so kind. Yes? Thank you so much. I’ll make all the arrangements from here.”
For years it has been customary in newspapers, magazines, and books to refer to the headquarters of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or SIS, or MI6, as being at a certain office block in the borough of Lambeth in London. It is a custom that causes quiet amusement to the staff members of “the Firm,” as it is more colloquially known in the community of such organizations, for the Lambeth address is a sedulously maintained front.
In much the same way, a front is maintained at Leconfield House on Curzon Street, still supposed to be the home of the counterintelligence arm, MI5, to decoy the unneeded inquirer. In reality, those indefatigable spy-catchers have not dwelt near the Playboy Club for years.
The real home of the world’s most secret Secret Intelligence Service is a modern-design steel-and-concrete block, allocated by the Department of the Environment, a stone’s throw from one of the capital’s principal Southern Regional railway stations, and it was taken over in the early seventies.
It was in his top-floor suite with its tinted windows looking out toward the spire of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament across the river that, just after lunch, the Director General of the SIS received the news of Lessing’s illness. The call came on one of the internal lines from the head of Personnel, who had received the message from the basement cipher room. He listened carefully.
“How long will he be off?” he asked at length.
“Several months, at least,” said Personnel. “There’ll be a couple of weeks in hospital in Helsinki, then home for a bit more. Probably several more weeks’ convalescence.”
“Pity,” mused the Director General. “We shall have to replace him rather fast.” His capacious memory recalled to him that Lessing had been running two Russian agents, low-level staffers in the Red Army and the Soviet Foreign Ministry, respectively—not world-beating, but useful. Finally he said, “Let me know when Lessing is safely tucked up in Helsinki. And get me a short list of possibles for his replacement. By close of play tonight, please.”