The Fourth Man by Robert Baer

Author:Robert Baer [BAER, ROBERT]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2022-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

in·ner sanc·tum /ˈɪn ər ˈsæŋk təm/ n. A private, closed-off space, often intended to protect the secrets of those who trust no one on the outside.

Langley; October 1994

INDEED, WHAT NEVER stopped bothering SIU is how the Fourth Man had managed to remain so elusive for so long. Sort of like the Loch Ness Monster, evidence of his or her existence was always episodic and thin. No one could come up with a satisfying explanation why more KGB defectors and spies wouldn’t have heard more about him. And if he was as high up in the CIA as Max said he was, how could the KGB keep him a secret for so long? These were questions that followed him into the darkest, most perplexing depths of KGB lore.

With the exceptions of Max and Adolf, Russians crossing the lines hadn’t heard the faintest echo of the Fourth Man. Yurchenko had nothing to say about him; neither did any of the dozens of Russian intelligence officers who’d served in the New York and Washington rezidenturas and then defected. At least one of them should have picked up something—anything—when they were back in Moscow. But not a word. It was as if a phantom Russian intelligence agency other than the KGB and GRU had recruited and run the Fourth Man. Or maybe some invisible KGB clique that truly knew how to keep a secret. One Soviet defector might have provided an answer.

In 1989, at the age of thirty-four, a Russian named Sergei Papushin resigned from the KGB and went into the oil business. On a business trip to New York, he got into a drunken scuffle and was arrested. The NYPD called the FBI, who sent agents to interview him. Refusing to cooperate, the next day Papushin ran to the KGB rezidentura to report the FBI approach, only to have the KGB security officer tell him not to sweat it. Discouraged and at his wit’s end, Papushin revisited the FBI offer and defected. Papushin was debriefed by both the FBI and CIA and later by MI6 because, when assigned to Moscow for the Second Chief Directorate, he was in the section that spied on the British embassy.

Landing a source with any knowledge of the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate, even one no longer employed, was a big deal. Anyone who worked in Soviet operations in those days knew the Second was a different animal. Known to be staffed by hard-boiled, provincial, xenophobic operatives, they looked at the West as corrupt, corrupting, and ultimately doomed. They were perfectly happy living in cramped cold-water apartments, driving around crappy Soviet cars, and serving as the Soviet Empire’s trusted storm troopers. They sometimes traveled abroad on short trips, usually to ride shotgun on traveling Soviet delegations. But it wasn’t enough to file off the jagged Soviet edge. Nor did it undermine their sincerely held belief that the United States was the Soviet Union’s mortal enemy and needed to be fought tooth and nail. In other words, getting your hand on one was akin to catching a blue lobster.

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