The Deceiver by Frederick Forsyth

Author:Frederick Forsyth
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 2011-02-14T16:08:18+00:00

As a concession, Timothy Edwards allowed McCready to take Nikolai Gorodov to his own apartment in Abingdon Villas for the evening.

“I’m afraid, Colonel, the real debriefing must start in the morning. A very agreeable country house has been prepared. You will want for nothing, I assure you.”

“Thank you. I understand,” said Gorodov.

It was just after ten that evening when Joe Roth arrived, summoned by a phone call from McCready. He found two SIS heavies in the hallway and two more in the corridor outside McCready’s modest flat, which surprised him.

McCready answered his ring on the doorbell, appearing in slacks and sweater, a glass of whiskey in his hand.

“Thanks for coming, Joe. Come on in. There’s someone I have wanted you to meet for a long time. You’ll never know how much.”

He led the way into the sitting room. The man at the window turned and smiled.

“Good evening, Mr. Roth,” said Gorodov. “Good to meet you at last.”

Roth stood as if paralyzed. Then he slumped into a chair and took McCready’s proffered whiskey. Gorodov seated himself opposite Roth.

“You’d better tell it,” said McCready to the Russian. “You know it better than I.”

The Russian sipped his drink as he pondered where to begin.

“Project Potemkin started eight years ago,” he said. “The original idea came from a junior officer, but General Drozdov took it up personally. It became his personal baby. The aim was to denounce a senior CIA officer as a Soviet plant, but in a manner so convincing and with such a wealth of apparently fireproof evidence that no one could reasonably not be taken in.

“The long-term aim was to sow years of feuding inside the Agency and thus destroy morale among the staff for a decade and wreck the relationship with the SIS in Britain.

“At first, no particular officer was the target, but after half a dozen were considered, the choice fell on Calvin Bailey. There were two reasons for this. One was that we knew he was not a much-liked man inside the Agency because of his personal manner. The second was that he had served in Vietnam, a suitable place for a possible recruitment.

“Calvin Bailey was spotted as a CIA agent in Vietnam purely as routine. You know we all try to identify each other’s staffers, and when we do, their movements and progress up the promotions ladder are carefully noted. Sometimes a lack of promotion may sow resentment, which can be exploited by a cunning recruiter. Well, this you know—we all do it.

“Also like the CIA, the KGB throws nothing away. Every tiny scrap of information, every fragment, is carefully kept and stored. Drozdov’s breakthrough came when he was once again examining the material that came to us from the Vietnamese after the final fall of Saigon in 1975. Most of your papers were burned, but in the confusion some survived. One mentioned a certain Nguyen Van Troc, who had worked for the Americans.

“That paper was the end for Van Troc. He and his cousin were picked up—they had not managed to escape.

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