“Quite right, there usually is. I can’t recall offhand. Let me sleep on it. If I think of anything, I’ll call you in the morning.”
The helpful colonel called Preston during breakfast. The clipped voice came down the line as if he were making a battle report to headquarters. “Remembered something,” he said. “Those huts were built for about a hundred men. But we were jammed in there at the end like sardines. More than two hundred chaps to a hut. Some slept on the floor, others had to share a bunk. Nothing poofy, you know, just had to be done.”
“I understand,” said Preston. “And Brandt?”
“Shared a bunk with another corporal. Name of Levinson. RDLI.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Royal Durban Light Infantry, Levinson was.”
Visagie Street came up with the information faster this time. Levinson was not nearly so common a name, and they had a regiment. The file was out in fifteen minutes. His name was Max Levinson and he had been born in Durban. He had quit the Army at the end of the war, so there was no pension and no address. But they knew he was sixty-five years old.
Preston tried the Durban telephone directory while Viljoen had the Durban police run the name through their files. Viljoen got the first lead. There were two parking tickets and an address. Max Levinson ran a small hotel on the seafront. Viljoen called and got Mrs. Levinson. She confirmed that her husband had been in Stalag 344. At the moment he was out fishing.
They twiddled their thumbs until nightfal
l, when Preston reached him by phone. The cheerful hotelier boomed down the line from the east coast.
“Sure I remember Frikki. Silly bastard did a runner into the woods. Never did hear of him again. What about him?”
“Where did he come from?” asked Preston.
“East London,” said Levinson without hesitation.
“What was his background?”
“He never said much about it,” replied Levinson. “Afrikaner, of course. Fluent Afrikaans, poor English. Working class. Oh, I remember, he said his dad was a shunter in the railway yards there.”
Preston made his good-byes and turned to Viljoen. “East London,” he said. “Can we drive there?”
Viljoen sighed. “I wouldn’t advise it,” he said, “it’s hundreds of miles. We’re a very big country, you know, Mr. Preston. If you really want, we’ll go by plane tomorrow. I’ll arrange a police car and driver to meet us.”
“Unmarked car, please,” said Preston. “And the driver in plainclothes.”
Although the headquarters of the KGB is at the “Center,” 2 Dzerzhinsky Square, in central Moscow, and though the building is not small, it would be far too cramped to contain even a portion of one of the chief directorates and departments that make up this huge organization. So the subheadquarters are scattered all over.
The First Chief Directorate is based out at Yasyenevo, on the outer ring road that circles Moscow, almost due south of the city. Almost all the FCD is housed in a modern aluminum-and-glass seven-story edifice shaped in the form of a three-pointed star, rather like the logo of Mercedes cars.
It was built by the Finns on contract, and was intended for the International Department of the Central Committee. But when it was finished, the ID people did not like it; they wanted to stay close to central Moscow; so it was given to the First Chief Directorate. It suits the FCD admirably, being well out of town and away from prying eyes.
Staffers of the FCD are officially undercover, even in their own country. Since many of them will have to go abroad (or already have been) posing as diplomats, the last thing they need is to be seen coming out of FCD headquarters by a nosy tourist who might put them on candid camera.
But there is one directorate within the FCD that is so secret it is not even based with the rest at Yasyenevo. If the FCD is secret, the S, or Illegals, Directorate is top secret. Not only do its agents not meet their FCD colleagues; they do not even meet each other. Their training and briefing is on a one-to-one basis—just the instructor and one pupil. They do not check in each morning to any office, since that way they might see each other.
The reason is simple in Soviet psychology: Russians are paranoid about secrecy and betrayal—there is nothing particularly Communist about this, it goes back to Tsarist days. The illegals are men (and occasionally women) who are rigorously trained to go into foreign countries and live under deep cover. Unfortunately, some illegals have been caught and have cooperated with their captors; others have defected and spilled all they know. Therefore, the less they know, the better. It is axiomatic in espionage that one cannot betray what or whom one does not know.
The illegals, therefore, are scattered among scores of small flats in central Moscow and report singly for training and briefing. In order to be close to his “lads,” the head of the S Directorate still keeps his office at the Center on Dzerzhinsky Square. It is on the sixth floor, three stories above that of KGB Chairman Chebrikov and two above those of the first deputy chairmen, Generals Tsinev and Kryuchkov.
It was to this unpretentious sanctum that two men came on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 18, while Preston was talking to Max Levinson, to confront the director, a seamy old veteran who had been in clandestine espionage all his adult life. What they presented to him did not please him.
“There is only one man who fits this bill,” he grudgingly admitted. “He is outstanding.”
One of the men from the Central Committee offered a small card. “Then, Comrade Major General, you will detach him from his duties forthwith and require him to report to this address.”
The director nodded glumly. He knew the address. When the men had gone he recalled their authorization again. It was from the Central Committee, all right, and though it did not say so in as many words, he had no doubt from whom it came with that kind of authority rating. He sighed resignedly. It was hard to lose one of the best men he had ever trained, a really exceptional agent, but there was no arguing with that particular order. He was a serving officer; it was not for him to question orders. He depressed a switch on his intercom. “Tell Major Valeri Petrofsky to report to me.”
The first plane out of Johannesburg for East London arrived on time at Ben Schoeman, the small, neat, blue-and-white airport that serves South Africa’s fourth commercial port and city. The police driver was waiting in the concourse and led them to a plain Ford sedan in the parking lot.