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Authors: John Knoerle
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Midwestern bumpkin I couldnât help feeling I had let the great man down.
I strode the length of the National Mall on a windswept day that couldnât make up its mind â cloudy one minute, sunny the next. I was angry with myself. I shouldnât have let Nikolai walk even if it meant putting him in a hammerlock and marching him upstairs.
The NKVD knew that Nikolai was ripe for âimperialist conversionâ because of his wifeâs illness. That his family didnât accompany him to his foreign posting indicated his superiors didnât fully trust him. He would have been under surveillance. His unauthorized visit to a decadent D.C. watering hole was all they would need to know.
Maybe. But it was thin gruel. Even the Blue Caps needed more than a visit to the T&C Lounge to justify a wet job in a foreign capital. Someone must have informed the NKVD that Nikolai was headed to the Mayflower in an attempt to establish contact with yours truly.
Nikolai was dead when he walked in the door. Or, more precisely, when I let him walk out.
I was Nikolaiâs proxy assassin. He was snuffed for the crime of speaking to me. But his real executioner was the person who sent him my way.
My question to Nikolai had been right on the money.
Why come to me?
Nikolai was steered, thatâs why. Sidled up to at a diplomatic reception by someone who knew he was frustrated and ripe to cross over, someone saying, âI canât help you personally but may I make a suggestion? Take your case to Hal Schroeder, he has the ear of Frank Wisner, heâs easy to get to. And, by the way, it would be better if Mr. Schroeder thought this was your idea, not mine.â
A twofer. EliminateNikolai and reduce my reputation to a smoking hole. Guy Burgess appeared just in time to flush Nikolai from the plush confines of the Harold Schroeder anti-Communist Command Center.
Burgess wanted the Russian neutralized because he feared Nikolai would expose him. Burgess wanted me discredited because I knew he was an intimate of Col. Norwood, who fled Berlin after I caught him working both sides.
Of course the person who sidled up to Nikolai couldnât be on Nickâs list of known Soviet agents, as Burgess likely was. Burgess would have needed a front man.
Hard to see how it could be anyone but his roomie, MI6 legend Kim Philby. Philby was beyond reproach. If Philby was dirty Nikolai wouldnât have known. If Philby was dirty only Lavrenty Beria and Josef Stalin would know.
Guilt by association, assassination by proxy.
Well, two can play at that game. The apartment on Nebraska Avenue would be watched. Beria, in his dark and devious heart, had to suspect that this decadent British aristocrat was playing him, that Burgess was that rarest of birds, a triple agent. Reporting to Burgessâ apartment immediately after my big meet went bust would confirm that suspicion.
Yes, this was a wonderful plan, the new way of the world. Donât get your hair mussed or your hands dirty, young fella, become a proxy assassin. Enlist today!
I stopped at a newstand. It was possible I had gotten ahead of myself. Nikolai had been found out but it didnât necessarily mean he was dead.
The story on the front page of the
Washington Times-Herald
quoted the Soviet Ambassador. Embassy attaché Nikolai Savayenko had thrown himself into the Potomac river upon learning of the death of his wife in Leningrad. She had died of heart failure.
Sure she had.
Thisis what we were up against. An enemy willing to kill an invalid to justify the murder of her husband.
I muttered dark curses and swore bloody vengeance. And not for the Soviet diplomat who had been bundled into a car by NKVD goons and dumped off a pier in the dead of night.
Anyone whoâs tasted combat enjoys poking fun at the blue-sky cookie-pushers in the State Department. There are, however, no blue-sky cookie-pushers in the Soviet diplomatic service. There arenât even any
I strode the length of the National Mall on a windswept day that couldnât make up its mind â cloudy one minute, sunny the next. I was angry with myself. I shouldnât have let Nikolai walk even if it meant putting him in a hammerlock and marching him upstairs.
The NKVD knew that Nikolai was ripe for âimperialist conversionâ because of his wifeâs illness. That his family didnât accompany him to his foreign posting indicated his superiors didnât fully trust him. He would have been under surveillance. His unauthorized visit to a decadent D.C. watering hole was all they would need to know.
Maybe. But it was thin gruel. Even the Blue Caps needed more than a visit to the T&C Lounge to justify a wet job in a foreign capital. Someone must have informed the NKVD that Nikolai was headed to the Mayflower in an attempt to establish contact with yours truly.
Nikolai was dead when he walked in the door. Or, more precisely, when I let him walk out.
I was Nikolaiâs proxy assassin. He was snuffed for the crime of speaking to me. But his real executioner was the person who sent him my way.
My question to Nikolai had been right on the money.
Why come to me?
Nikolai was steered, thatâs why. Sidled up to at a diplomatic reception by someone who knew he was frustrated and ripe to cross over, someone saying, âI canât help you personally but may I make a suggestion? Take your case to Hal Schroeder, he has the ear of Frank Wisner, heâs easy to get to. And, by the way, it would be better if Mr. Schroeder thought this was your idea, not mine.â
A twofer. EliminateNikolai and reduce my reputation to a smoking hole. Guy Burgess appeared just in time to flush Nikolai from the plush confines of the Harold Schroeder anti-Communist Command Center.
Burgess wanted the Russian neutralized because he feared Nikolai would expose him. Burgess wanted me discredited because I knew he was an intimate of Col. Norwood, who fled Berlin after I caught him working both sides.
Of course the person who sidled up to Nikolai couldnât be on Nickâs list of known Soviet agents, as Burgess likely was. Burgess would have needed a front man.
Hard to see how it could be anyone but his roomie, MI6 legend Kim Philby. Philby was beyond reproach. If Philby was dirty Nikolai wouldnât have known. If Philby was dirty only Lavrenty Beria and Josef Stalin would know.
Guilt by association, assassination by proxy.
Well, two can play at that game. The apartment on Nebraska Avenue would be watched. Beria, in his dark and devious heart, had to suspect that this decadent British aristocrat was playing him, that Burgess was that rarest of birds, a triple agent. Reporting to Burgessâ apartment immediately after my big meet went bust would confirm that suspicion.
Yes, this was a wonderful plan, the new way of the world. Donât get your hair mussed or your hands dirty, young fella, become a proxy assassin. Enlist today!
I stopped at a newstand. It was possible I had gotten ahead of myself. Nikolai had been found out but it didnât necessarily mean he was dead.
The story on the front page of the
Washington Times-Herald
quoted the Soviet Ambassador. Embassy attaché Nikolai Savayenko had thrown himself into the Potomac river upon learning of the death of his wife in Leningrad. She had died of heart failure.
Sure she had.
Thisis what we were up against. An enemy willing to kill an invalid to justify the murder of her husband.
I muttered dark curses and swore bloody vengeance. And not for the Soviet diplomat who had been bundled into a car by NKVD goons and dumped off a pier in the dead of night.
Anyone whoâs tasted combat enjoys poking fun at the blue-sky cookie-pushers in the State Department. There are, however, no blue-sky cookie-pushers in the Soviet diplomatic service. There arenât even any
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