Topaz - Leon Uris [59]
“Yes.”
“I have a villa there. You will come?”
“Yes.”
“At the entrance take the right fork and follow the bay for exactly two kilometers. You can’t miss the place. A big white stone wall and the name Casa de Revolutión over the gate. In front there is a caretaker’s house. He will give you the key. Women have waited for me before, so it will not seem unusual. If you leave Havana now you should be there within an hour.”
“I will see you there.”
Parra hung up, puzzled. “Uribe!”
“Yes, Señor Parra.”
“I am going out for a while. If Muñoz calls, nothing is to be done until I personally give the word.”
“Yes, señor.”
“You keep trying to reach Castro.”
“Yes,” Uribe said, retreating to the adjoining office.
Parra placed a telephone call to Casa de Revolución which was answered by the chief of the guard detail. “It is Rico,” he said. “I am expecting a woman to arrive in an hour. Take her and search her for weapons, then hold her in the main building until I arrive. Stake out the guards around the grounds.”
“What is up?”
“It may be a trick of the underground ... maybe not.” Rico Parra took his pistol belt from the hat rack and strapped it to his waist and left his office.
30
BORIS KUZNETOV DEVELOPED A passion for Pepsi-Cola. As often as not he put away a six-pack during each interrogation session. He drained the bottom of his glass, asked the nurse for another, and looked into the familiar faces of Jaffe, Kramer, W. Smith, and Dr. Billings.
“In 1950,” he continued, “I was assigned to East Berlin as the Resident of the Soviet Embassy under the cover of being a member of the purchasing commission. Under my office, the communications, dead-letters boxes, and control of operations were directed. I also kept surveillance over all the people working in the Soviet Embassy.”
“You directed espionage operations?”
“Yes. Mostly in West Berlin.”
“Outside of West Berlin?”
“Not much. I recruited illegals.”
“Will you explain that?”
“We looked for young Germans of fifteen to twenty years of age whose parents had Communist backgrounds or ones who were otherwise suited for illegal work. These people were sent back to Moscow to a special German school for training that goes on sometimes for a decade. We have such schools for illegals from most Western countries. The master plan is to slip these people into Western Germany or Italy or France for a year to familiarize themselves completely with the area where they will work later on. Then after another eight years they will go back to the West with a complete set of false documents. They will be skilled enough to obtain highly placed positions in government, science, industry, or the military. With the planting of this seed of illegals there will be a great harvest of agents in the future of a caliber better than anything known.”
“How many did you recruit?”
“Fourteen.”
“Were others recruited from Germany?”
“I think the school in Moscow has forty Germans.”
“The French school?”
“Probably the same number.”
W. Smith and Kramer began an extensive round of questions to detail Kuznetov’s Berlin operations.
They were suddenly interrupted by the appearance of Michael Nordstrom and his evaluator, Sanderson Hooper. The two had been coming more frequently, stopping the regular interrogation to ask questions about the NATO documents Kuznetov had turned over at the time of his defection.
Boris realized that the Americans were coming upon something important.
“Do you mind if I question you in English?” Nordstrom always asked.
“It’s all right.”
“Would you identify this document?”
All the telltale numberings had been removed from the documents. Kuznetov adjusted his glasses and scanned the paper for a sparse ten seconds.
“This is in your twelve-hundred series, contingency plans in the event of Soviet troop movement in the direction of Norway.”
“This one?”
“Class B document on defective ammunition.”
“This one?”
“Purchase order for shoes. Special cold-weather materials