The Company: A Novel of the CIA Read Online Free PDF Page A

a whisper. "For the last several months I have been assigned as the KGB liaison with the new German Democratic Republic intelligence service. They are setting up an office in a former school in the Pankow district of East Berlin near the restricted area where the Party and government leaders live. The new intelligence service, part of the Ministerium füer Staatssicherheit, goes by a cover name—Institut füerWirtschaftswissenschafüiche Forschung, the Institute for Economic and Scientific Research. I can deliver you its order of battle down to the last paper clip. The chief is Ackermann, Anton, but it is said that his second in command, who is twenty-eight years of age, is being groomed as the eventual boss. His name is Wolf, Marcus. You can maybe find photographs of him—he covered the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 1945 for the Berlin radio station Berliner Rundfunk."
    Jack, who had been poring over the Berlin Base morgue files in the six weeks since he'd been posted to Germany, interrupted in what he hoped was a bored voice. "Wolf spent the war years in Moscow and speaks perfect Russian. Everyone at Karlshorst calls him by his Russian name, Misha."
    Vishnevsky plunged on, dredging up names and dates and places in a desperate attempt to impress the Sorcerer. "The Main Directorate started out with eight Germans and four Soviet advisors but they are expanding rapidly. Within the Main Directorate there is a small independent unit called Abwehr, what you call counterintelligence. Its brief is to monitor and penetrate the West German security services. The Abwehr staff plans to use captured Nazi archives to blackmail prominent people in the West who have suppressed their Nazi pasts. High on their list of targets is Filbinger, Hans, the BadenWurttemberg political figure who, as a Nazi prosecutor, handed down death sentences for soldiers and civilians. The architect of this Westwork program is the current head of the Main Directorate, Stahlmann, Richard—"
    Jack interrupted again. "Stahlmann's real name is Artur Illner. He's been a member of the German Communist Party since the First World War. He's operated under a cover alias for so long even his wife calls him Stahlmann."
    The Sorcerer, pleased with Jack's ability to pick up on the game, rewarded him with a faint smile.
    Jack's comments had rattled the Russian. He dragged an oversized handkerchief from a trouser pocket and mopped the back of his neck. "I am able to give you—" Vishnevsky hesitated. He had planned to dole out what he had, an increment of information in exchange for an increment of protection; he had planned to keep the best for when he was safely in the West and then use it to pry a generous settlement package out of his hosts. When he spoke again his words were barely audible. "I am able to reveal to you the identity of a Soviet agent in Britain's intelligence service. Someone high up in their MI6...."
    To Jack, watching from the wall, it appeared as if the Sorcerer had frozen in place.
    "You know his name?" Torriti asked casually.
    "I know things about him that will allow you to identify him."
    "Such as?"
    "The precise date he was debriefed in Stockholm last summer. The approximate date he was debriefed in Zurich the previous winter. Two operations that were exposed because of him—one involved an agent, the second involved a microphone. With these details even a child would be capable of identifying him."
    "How do you happen to have this information?"
    "I was serving in Stockholm last February when a KGB officer from Moscow Centre turned up. He traveled under the cover of a sports journalist from Pravda. He was flying in and out for a highly secret one-time contact. It was a cutout operation—he debriefed a Swedish national who debriefed the British mole. The KGB officer was the husband of my wife's sister. One night we invited him to dinner. He drank a great deal of Swedish vodka. He is my age and very competitive—he wanted to impress me. He boasted