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By Root 364 0

These operatives were paid for each solid lead they turned in. As a result, veterans and amateurs alike were looking everywhere for spies. Peggy called it a Russian version of Entertainment Tonight, with stringers everywhere. And she was right. The quarry was foreigners instead of celebrities, but the goal was the same: to report on furtive or suspicious activities. And because so many businesspeople assumed there was no longer a threat, they stumbled into trouble by helping Russian associates exchange rubles for dollars or marks, by bringing in jewelry or expensive clothes for the black market, or by spying on rival foreign companies doing business here. Instead of being prosecuted, foreign prisoners were typically allowed to buy their way out of trouble. Fields-Hutton joked that the ministry spent less time protecting national security than it did overseeing commerce. Japanese manufacturers alone paid Russian agents hundreds of millions of rubles a year to watch for competitors who might be keeping too close an eye on their activities in Russia. It was even rumored that the Japanese had put over 50 million rubles into the failed presidential bid of Interior Minister Nikolai Dogin to help protect the country from an influx of foreign investors.

The spy business was alive and well, and after seven years British agent Fields-Hutton was still in the thick of it.

Fields-Hutton had graduated from Cambridge with an advanced degree in Russian literature and a desire to become a novelist. The Sunday after his graduation, he was sitting in a coffeehouse in Kensington-- reading Dostoevsky's Note from the Underground, as it happened-- when a woman in an adjoining booth turned around and asked, "How would you like to learn more about Russia?" She laughed, then said, "A great deal more?"

That was his introduction to British Intelligence, and to Peggy. Later, he learned that DI6 has a long association with Cambridge, going back to World War II and Ultra, the top-secret project to decipher the legendary German Enigma Code.

Fields-Hutton went for a walk with Peggy and agreed to a meeting with her superiors. Within a year, DI6 had set him up as a comic book publisher who was buying stories and art from Russian cartoonists for publication in Europe. That gave him a reason to make constant trips with large, well-stocked portfolios and stacks of magazines, as well as videocassettes and toys featuring characters the Russians had designed. From the start, Fields-Hutton was amazed at how the gift of a superhero mug or bath towel or sweatshirt won him favors from airline employees, hotel workers, and even the police. Whether they turned around and sold the items on the black market or gave them to their kids, barter was a powerful tool in Russia.

With all the magazines and toys he carried, it was easy to hide the microfilm-- sometimes wrapped around the staple of a comic book, other times rolled inside a hollow claw on the hand of a Tigerman action figure. Ironically, the comic book operation had taken on a life of its own, and British Intelligence was actually collecting a handsome royalty from the licenses. The organization's charter prohibited money-making ventures-- "This is, after all, the government," Winston Churchill once told an agent who wanted to sell a code-breaking toy. However, then-- Prime Minister John Major and the Parliament agreed to let the comic book profits go to social programs to help the families of slain or disabled British operatives.

Though he had come to love the comic book business, and decided he would become a novelist when he retired-- with more than enough material for realistic thrillers-- Fields-Hutton's real job with British Intelligence was to keep an eye on both foreign and domestic construction projects in Eastern Russia. Secret rooms, hidden bugs, and sub-subbasements were still being built and, when found and eavesdropped on, they provided a wealth of intelligence. His present contacts-- Andrei and Leon, an illustrator who lived in an apartment in St. Petersburg-- provided him with blueprints and