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The Arrangement was very simple, so simple in fact that it didn’t really deserve the capital letter, which it had got for simply being in existence for so long. It was the sort of sensible arrangement that many isolated agents, working in awkward conditions a long way from their superiors, reach with their opposite number when they realize that they have more in common with their immediate opponents than their remote allies. It meant a tacit non-interference in certain of each other’s activities. It made certain that while neither really won, also neither really lost, and both were able to demonstrate to their masters the great strides they were making against a cunning and well-informed adversary.
- Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
As the war raged over Europe and the US joined the battle, Adrian Sanders, agent of the OSS, was pleased to secure himself a cushy diplomatic posting in Moscow. The Germans had been pushed out two years ago, and Adrian doubted they would be making a resurgence. Russia was infamously a difficult country to invade. And it was better than being on the front lines.
His job was to provide a diplomatic backchannel to their allies in Moscow — intelligence too sensitive or filthy to be passed through “clean” channels. That was how he met his opposite number in the NKVD.
The name on his papers was Ivan Smirnov, but Adrian didn’t believe that for a moment. These NKVD types were always cloak and dagger. ‘Ivan’ was cold and suspicious, but he was always professional. Good. Adrian was too busy to bother with a pissing match with some Russki.
They met in Adrian’s office. The embassy was shabby and depressing, everything poorly repaired after the bombings, everything rusting. But ‘Ivan’ took a look around it with his typically pragmatic eyes and said, “Your own private office. Convenient.”
Adrian allowed that it was. “It’s all thanks to you,” he said. “I told them I needed somewhere to conduct our meetings privately, and it wasn’t going to be outside the embassy in case you Russkis bugged it. Of course, you probably have the embassy bugged too, right?”
‘Ivan’ chuckled. “If we did,” he said, “I wouldn’t tell you.”
Except that he did, two weeks later, handing Adrian a typed transcript of a conversation that took place in the embassy between two cipher clerks. They read it together.
“What kind of fucking idiot admits to being a double agent for the Abwehr in the middle of his own embassy?” Adrian asked.
“The kind of idiot who wants to be caught, perhaps?” his NKVD counterpart theorized. “A conscience is a terrible thing to have in this business.”
Adrian considered that. “Not a problem I’ve ever had,” he said.
“No,” ‘Ivan’ said, with that cruel little smile of his. “No, nor have I.”
So they understood each other. That was how it began: with the understanding that they were both men of the world, and that they shared the same pragmatic view of the world. The Soviet was easy to work with, more so than many of Adrian’s colleagues in the CIA.
And then it occurred to Adrian that it could be very useful to have a friend in the NKVD. Before the war, he had been a well-fed banker; he did not enjoy living under Soviet supply shortages.
“Steak,” Adrian told his Soviet counterpart. “A good, grass-fed steak, that’s what I need.”
“Not an easy thing to get, here,” the Soviet agent pointed out. He glanced up at Adrian. He did not say the word ‘famine,’ but his eyes carried the message.
“Right,” Adrian said. “But if there’s one thing I know about government, it’s that the guys at the top always find a way to get fed. Isn’t that right? So, I was thinking . . . you’re one of the guys at the top. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, huh?”
The Soviet’s eyebrows go up. “You’re suggesting an exchange. Information?”
Adrian laughed in his face. “Hell no. I’m no traitor. I was thinking chocolate.”
“Chocolate?”
“It ships from the US better than steak does. And you’ve got a girl, haven’t you? Nina. Nothing like a few boxes of expensive foreign chocolates to make a marriage go smoother, right?”
The Soviet agent’s lips twitched with suppressed mirth. “Yes. I think I could consider a deal on those terms.”
Later, over a dinner of steak and vodka, Adrian asked his new friend, “What’s your name? Your real name, I mean, not the one on your passport.”
The Soviet gave him a considering look. “Oleg,” he said at last.
“Oleg what?”
“Just Oleg.”
“Well, Oleg,” Adrian said, pushing the box of chocolates across the table towards Oleg and pulling the lid off, “I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
Oleg’s thin fingers selected a chocolate, and popped it into his mouth, chewing. The chocolate had melted just slightly, and left a smear on his fingers, and his tongue darted out to clean it off. Adrian looked away abruptly, and tugged at his tie to loosen it. It suddenly seemed rather warm in his embassy-assigned lodgings.
So that was how it went. A trade here, a favor there — neither Oleg nor Adrian went hungry that year. Not long afterwards, the war ended, and the relationship between Moscow and DC crumbled. Adrian was sent home, without even a chance to say goodbye to Oleg. He didn’t mind too much.
The next time they met was in Germany. Adrian was sitting in the diplomat’s gallery in the parliament of the fledgling West German nation, bored out of his mind and hating Germany, when Oleg walked in and took a seat.
Adrian was immediately on guard. Contact between Soviet and American diplomats — much less spies posing as diplomats — was not encouraged, and Adrian doubted Oleg was here just to say hello. But in fact, Oleg said nothing. He simply watched the parliamentarians argue and took notes, every inch the diplomat.
Except that Adrian knew he wasn’t.
He reported Oleg’s presence to the higher ups and was told to approach him. A possible defector, they thought. Adrian, who knew Oleg well enough by then, doubted it. Oleg was a political creature, a schemer. He would never abandon his position of power in the NKVD to play informant for the US. Neither of them had much respect for double agents or defectors; Adrian hated having to work with them. As far as he was concerned, anyone who wanted to betray his own country couldn’t be trusted as far as you could throw them.
So next week, when Oleg walked into the diplomatic gallery, Adrian said, “Do these fucking Krauts ever stop arguing?”
Oleg chuckled. “Politicians are the same all around the world. What is it the English say? Ours not to reason why. Ours just to . . . listen.”
That sentence was as good as an admission that Oleg was here as a spy, not that Adrian had needed the confirmation. “How’s Nina?” he asked. “You still with her?”
“She is doing well. We’re married.”
“Score one for American chocolates.”
“Perhaps you’d like to meet her?” Oleg said, raising an eyebrow. “Are you married, Adrian? You never were much of a hit with the fairer sex, or so our intelligence claims.”
Adrian glared. “Women can’t handle a man who speaks his mind,” he snapped. “Besides, I found a woman who knows her place. Yeah, I’m married.”
“Good,” Oleg said, smiling. “Then invite me over for dinner. I will introduce you to Nina, and you can introduce me to your new wife.”
It was a surprising offer, one that made Adrian wonder if Oleg really was going to defect. But he accepted, and that Friday, Oleg came to Adrian’s house for dinner.
It was a good meal, and because they had guests, Adrian refrained from his usual criticism of his wife’s cooking. Nina was beautiful, although visibly rather afraid to talk to either Adrian or his wife.
After dinner, Oleg said, “Shall we go outside for a smoke and leave the ladies to get acquainted? Do you still smoke those awful American cigars, Adrian?”
They stepped outside. Oleg led Adrian out into the garden, in the shadow of a tree at the opposite side of the yard from the house. He said, “Your house is bugged, of course.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” The sound technicians had been over all day, making sure all the wires were in place.
“But out here . . .?”
“We can talk freely out here,” Adrian said. He leaned against the tree and lit his awful American cigar. “So. You here to defect?”
Oleg laughed. “I thought you knew me better than that. No. I am, of course, a loyal Party official, here on official business.” His lips twitched with amusement at that. “I am here to persuade you to defect, in fact.”
Adrian’s eyebrows, such as they were, went up. “What? You Russkis think I’m a potential defector?”
“Well, why not?” Oleg said. “We both know you’re not exactly a loyal American patriot, are you?”
“Screw you,” Adrian said.
“You are embezzling from the embassy coffers,” Oleg said. “Sadly, we have not been able to turn up any blackmail-worthy proof . . . but we know you are corruptible.” He smiled. “Of course, I already knew that.”
“I’m not selling out my country,” Adrian protested. “I’m just making a buck on the side. You know how it is.”
“Yes, I do,” Oleg agreed. He turned to face Adrian. “Which is why I am not going to try to convince you to defect or to turn double agent. I know you would say no.”
“You’re damn right I would.”
“I had something else in mind.”
Adrian studied Oleg’s handsome, cruel features in the evening shadows. “What?”
“There’s a double agent in our embassy, no?” Oleg asked him. “Someone on our payroll who reports back to you.”
“You know I can’t say anything about that,” Adrian said.
“Are you sure?” Oleg said. He crossed his arms. “We are close to him. In a week, two weeks, my comrades will have uncovered him. You could probably pull him out before we get to him, but . . . either way, shortly he’ll be no good to the CIA.” He lit his pipe and took a drag from it. “Of course, it would be a great benefit to my career if I were the one to uncover him, personally.”
Adrian stared at him. “You want me to sell him out.”
“We have a man in the CIA, too,” Oleg said. “Not so well-placed as your man in our embassy, but you’ve no doubt noticed the leak by now.” He smiled. “It would be quite a — how do you say it? — quite a feather in your cap if you were the one to unmask him.”
Slowly, it dawned on Adrian what Oleg was proposing. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a ruthless, backstabbing bastard, Oleg?”
“Many times,” Oleg said, agreeably, “but I am in good company there.”
That was the first time Adrian betrayed his country for Oleg, but not the last. It was not, he told himself, really treason. After all, Oleg always traded him information of commensurate value, such that the USSR never got a leg up on the US via their arrangement. It was only he, Adrian, who benefited.
And Oleg, of course.
With each other’s help, Adrian and Oleg shot up the ranks of their respective agencies. And in between, they talked. About paranoid Communist loyalty officers and prying McCarthyist FBI informants. About the difficulties of maintaining both a marriage and a career in intelligence and (subsequently) about the best ways to hide from your wife that you were sleeping with your secretary. About assets who drank too much and assets who were constantly paranoid of betrayal and assets who developed consciences at inconvenient moments. About anything and everything under the sun.
Oleg discovered that it was a relief to have someone outside of his country that he could talk to freely — as much as he ever spoke freely, that is. Adrian was irreverent and disloyal and did not hesitate to voice his views about either Oleg’s or his own government, and over time, Oleg admitted that he agreed with most of Adrian’s points. Their superiors were all fools; they had to be, or Oleg and Adrian would never have gotten away with their arrangement for so long. They did not understand the practical realities of intelligence work, and had to be kept pacified with long reports that were 90% fiction, tiny scraps of useful information padded out into wild tales. Everyone in the KGB was doing it, of course; Oleg was just doing it better.
Once, after Oleg had sent an American spy to his death and both he and Adrian had had a few drinks, Oleg asked his American counterpart, “Does it ever bother you?”
“What?”
“Selling out your agents to me.”
Adrian considered. “Does it bother you?” he asked, in return.
Oleg shrugged. “I am an NKVD man. I care about achieving concrete results. The means are immaterial.” He lifted an eyebrow, faintly challenging. “And you?”
Adrian shrugged, too. “Someone’s always getting screwed in this business. The only difference is, this way I can be sure it’s not me getting screwed.”
So Oleg was surprised — and not a little concerned — when, after sitting down to their usual meeting, one day in 1964, Adrian said, “You should report this meeting to your superiors.”
“What?” Oleg said.
“This is business, not pleasure, Oleg,” Adrian said, leaning back in his chair. “I was ordered to arrange a meeting with you, this time.”
“I hope your superiors are not still thinking of me as a potential defector,” Oleg said. “As much as I enjoy your company, I am not planning on making my stay on this side of the Iron Curtain permanent anytime soon.”
“No,” Adrian said. “It’s bigger than that.”
Oleg had his doubts about Kuryakin. The man had always been a loose cannon, which made him a poor fit for a delicate international mission. He’d never seemed to quite come to terms with the brutal necessities of intelligence work. As for Solo, Adrian said he was barely a CIA man at all, a captured thief working off his debt to his government. But neither Adrian nor Oleg would ever have chosen an agent who wasn’t disposable for this mission. They were both pragmatists, and they knew that the chances of this newfound East-West cooperation working out long term were slim. A KGB agent who worked in close quarters, openly, with the CIA, would always be considered tainted by the leadership. The same was true for the CIA agent. Solo and Kuryakin were picked because they were outsiders, liminal men with no friends to object should their superiors sell them out.
Oleg’s only concern was that Kuryakin might snap and murder Solo. It would be quite a mess if he did. On the other hand, he and Adrian had covered up worse messes in the past. Thinking ahead, Oleg made arrangements to dispose of the American's body should the worst happen.
Somehow, neither of them killed each other, and the mission got done. Oleg paged through Kuryakin’s report. Kuryakin’s reports were always briefer than many of his comrades’, but they were still, of course, packed with the usual KGB exaggeration. Reading between the lines, Oleg suspected that Kuryakin had more to do with the mysterious disappearance of the nuclear tape than he let on. That was not of interest to Oleg. What he was concerned about was whether anyone could possibly blame him, Oleg, for the loss of the tapes.
No, he decided, after reading through the entire report. No, he couldn’t be blamed for this. It was simply one of the unfortunate realities of espionage. Sometimes, information got lost in the cracks. No one was to blame.
He recommended to his superiors that the UNCLE project be continued. Kuryakin and Solo worked well together, he lied.
What he meant was: Adrian and I work well together.
“I’m still impressed your agent hasn’t killed that jackass Solo,” Adrian commented.
“So am I,” Oleg said. “I suppose Kuryakin has finally learned to control his temper. Or perhaps he’s simply enjoying those American steaks too much to jeopardize his position in UNCLE.”
It was 1966 when Maxim Ivanovich Sokolov walked into Oleg’s office, and set down a file on Oleg’s desk.
Oleg opened the file, and his eyebrows went up at what he saw inside. Kuryakin and Solo, photographed covertly through a hotel window. At first, Oleg thought the pictures were of a fistfight, the two men’s bodies close together and their faces turned away from the camera. Then he turned the page to see another photo, of their lips pressed together, Solo shoving Kuryakin up against the wall to kiss him, Kuryakin clinging to him like his life depended on it.
Normally, in his line of work, Oleg was delighted to discover a CIA man with homosexual tendencies. It was the perfect opening for any number of dirty tricks. But in this case, he was profoundly annoyed. Why couldn’t Kuryakin keep it in his pants? Or, failing that, why couldn’t he find some American prostitute to screw, instead of jumping into bed with a CIA agent? This was going to be a terrible mess. It was always a problem when a KGB man was caught in the act of sodomy; the agency was fiercely protective of its reputation and did not want that kind of scandal. But with a CIA agent? The scandal would be unimaginable. No, the whole thing would have to be covered up. The CIA would likely cooperate — they hardly wanted another excuse for their rivals in the FBI to accuse them all of being homosexuals and traitors — and the UNCLE project would have to be quietly scuttled. Kuryakin would have to be sent off to the Gulag like his father, or perhaps quietly put in a KGB-controlled mental hospital. Perhaps Adrian would arrange for Solo to vanish into some CIA black site to be experimented on, or perhaps he would ask Oleg to deal with him, too.
The diplomats and the journalists would declare UNCLE an obvious failure, and the Cold War would continue, and the world would be a slightly less safe place because of it. Oleg would be sent back to Moscow, probably, and Adrian to Langley, and their arrangement, which had so beautifully eased Oleg’s way up the ranks, would be at an end. He might never see Adrian again.
“Thank you for bringing this to me, Maxim Ivanovich,” Oleg said, smoothly. “Of course, we can’t have perverts like this in the ranks. I trust you know better than to mention this to anyone — we must handle this discreetly to avoid scandal.”
“Of course, sir,” Sokolov said.
“Go about your duties. I shall take care of this,” Oleg said, and waved Sokolov out of his office.
Once Sokolov was gone, Oleg opened his cabinet and paged through his dossiers, considering the many cases he had open at the moment. He settled on one, the dossier of a Soviet defector in West Germany whom his superiors wanted dead, and began to draft a plan for a KGB officer — he’ll suggest Sokolov’s name later on — to go into West Germany and assassinate him.
Once Sokolov was out in the field, in enemy territory, all it would take was one word from Oleg and Adrian would make sure Sokolov wasn’t captured alive. After it was all cleared up, Oleg would have to have a word with Kuryakin and make sure he understood what would happen to him if he failed to be more discreet.
Oleg examined the photos on his desk, the American agent and the Russian agent entwined in each other’s arms. And for the first time, it occurred to him to wonder if Adrian might share his agent’s perversion. If Adrian’s affairs had ever included men as well as women.
If Adrian might be interested in sharing Solo’s hands-on approach to international cooperation.
Oleg entertained the possibility for a pleasant few moments and then, filing that thought away for future consideration, carefully fed the photographs, one by one, into the fireplace.