"____" "____" "____" " ____" " A table for lunch." " By yourself?" " No." "I'm meeting someone." " Would you like anything to drink sir?" " No." "Actually yes." "Martini vodka straight up." "Yes sir." "Waiter." "Check!" "Please." "I was supposed to meet one of your attachés 45 minutes ago." "My name is Aldrich Ames." "I work for the CIA." "I think he'll want to meet with me... after he reads this." "____ 21 before 9:00 right now." "For most of us, pancakes are something we eat at breakfast, but when you call them crepes, then add a few other things to the crepe..." "You're kidding me, right?" "Nobody wears that to your school." "Everybody wears this to school." "The boys, too?" "Tell mom this is normal." "Sandy, I've been instructed to inform you that the obscene clothing your daughter is wearing is, in fact, normal." "Dad!" "I appreciate the fighting spirit." "Honest, I do." "Now go change." "Thanks for having my back." "It's us against them." "You okay?" "Hey, you better hurry." "You'll miss the bus." "Yeah, I got to run." "Mm." "Bye." "____" "One thing that's become very clear about the Soviet position in the last several months is their outright antagonism to the president's Star War proposal." "The Soviet threat was there this morning on the front page of the communist-party newspaper..." ""unless there is an end to the Star Wars project,"" "said Pravda," ""there will be a new and deadly spiral of the arms race."" "Our bureau chief in Moscow, Walter Rodgers, has a report on the overall Soviet attitude" " ____ - to negotiations." "The thaw in Soviet-American relations has been enthusiastically welcomed by the Soviet people." "For more than a year, they've been told the United States was on the brink of launching a nuclear war." "With the superpowers now launching disarmament talks, the Russian people are eager for them to succeed." "Grimes." "Staffer, Wally's office, five minutes." "Last-second heebie-jeebies." "Who panicked?" "Ames." "He's got his head up his ass." "You are a model of compassion." "I call them as I see them." "Which is why you have so many friends." "Oh, but you still love me, though, right?" "Hey. 6:00 P.M. in Moscow." "Do you know where your case officer is?" "Getting drunk with the KGB." "Oh, staffer in five minutes." "Austin's office, I know." "Thanks, Louisa." "Good morning, Lorraine." "Nightly cable traffic." "Okay, two routine, one night action, three immediate, all restricted cases." "Also, there's a staffer." "It's a mistake." "He doesn't want to take the cash across the border." "Dead-dropping money inside the Soviet union's too risky." "The asset picks up the package and anyone could see him with it." "But having him travel with the money is just as bad." "There are KGB agents at every border crossing." "Sandy, 20,000 rubles is not easy to conceal in a dead-drop location." "If they find cash on him, they'll kill him." "Cash could be a sign of criminal activity, not espionage." "And anyway, this is a perfect opportunity to show him that we are capable of communicating with him inside the Soviet union." "The asset code named GT Weigh is a highly placed KGB officer." "He was a primary asset for us in the '70s." "He gave us invaluable intel on overseas operations." "When he resurfaced 10 weeks ago, we promised him more money, and we need to make good on that promise." "But more than that, we need to prove to him... to ourselves... that we can run a viable operation inside KGB territory right under their noses." "Okay." "Why prove it with such a valuable asset?" "If this is a test case, let's use a small fry." "This isn't a test case, Rick!" "It's how we do business." "It's what we do." "Art." "Don't look at me, Wally." "It's why they pay you the big bucks." "Drop the money." "Tell Moscow to move forward." "And keep me updated." "Restricted access." "Immediate action traffic, Moscow station." "Proceed with GT Weigh funds dead drop as discussed." "Update asap." "____" ""Proceed with GT Weigh." ""Funds drop." "As discussed."" "Here we go, chief." "Just hope they know what they're doing." "I hope we all know what we're doing." "You move with foot traffic and you blend in," " especially around bars." " Understood." "Double back on every other street corner," " two hours' worth at the very least." " Got it." "And look for casuals... men in parked cars, pedestrians who change direction ahead or behind you." "You drop only when you are positive you are black." "Absolutely positive." "Jack, I've done this before." "You be safe." "Traffic from Moscow station?" "Sorry about earlier." "I just... you know, I..." "I didn't agree." "You're entitled to your opinion, Rick, even if it's wrong." "Go for a smoke?" "Trying to quit." "Good for you." "I wish." "Well..." "Let me know how it goes, huh?" "Grimes." "Nothing yet." " Keep me informed." " Yeah, first to know." "All right." "You're breaking my arm!" "Get me up to speed." "We were proceeding with the dead drop for GT Weigh." "KGB officer Leonid Poleshchuk." "Encrypted names only." "Oh, for crying out loud, he's a human being." "Arthur." "Follow protocol." "For GT Weigh in our operational location in Petrovsky park." "Our case officer started the operation at... 1420, gmt." "I was told he had two hours to evade detection and go black." " And then?" " He never reported back to his station chief." "Who was first contact to us?" "The case officer's wife reported that he hadn't returned home." "What time was that?" "1830, gmt." "So he took two hours to go black, filled the drop, was arrested, and his wife took an extra two hours grace time and called us." "We need to face facts here, people... they rolled up our case officer." "They probably know why he was there." "Which means..." "GT Weigh's been compromised." "Told you." "This was a really bad idea." "Rick, not the moment for blame." "Whether our asset has been compromised is a guess on our part." "Seems like an educated guess, Wallace." "Let's just focus on what we know for sure." "Where's our case officer now?" "We believe he's being held in Lubyanka prison." "Notify the state department." "Wake up the U.S. ambassador." "____" "Get your hands off me!" "I am an American diplomat!" "I work..." "I work at the U.S. embassy!" "I am an American diplomat!" "Ohh!" "I work at the U.S. embassy." "20,000 rubles." "That's a lot of money." "I'm an American diplomat working at the U.S. embassy." "I hereby request that you call the U.S. ambassador and alert him to this illegal detention." "Yes." "Let's talk of legality." "You are American citizen leaving 20,000 rubles in piece of broken concrete... in downtown Moscow." "By any reading of Soviet law, that speaks to impending criminal activity." "You care to explain?" "I'm an American diplomat, working for the U.S. embassy." "Perhaps it was for a woman." "Have you fallen in love with one of our Russian beauties?" "Hmm?" "A mistress?" "Hmm?" "She wants you to take care of her." "That would be... plausible cover story." "What do you think?" "Or shall we just be honest with each other?" "Huh?" "!" "You are no more American diplomat than I am comrade worker in Lada factory!" "We are both spies!" "And I caught you spying!" "You know... all you really have to do to make this all better, to be released to your family, is confirm that the man we arrested was your asset." "Hey." "Spit it out, Grimes." "Our case officer's sitting in a prison cell right now." "God only knows how the KGB is interrogating him." "I'll call the state department, they'll scream and yell, and we'll get him out of there." "But that's not what you're really worried about, is it?" "The asset..." "Poleshchuk." "I spent a month with him in Panama." "Wild man, drank like a fish." "But I grew to like him." "He told me this story, said he wanted to bribe a potential recruit with a bottle of whiskey, but his KGB boss wouldn't pay for it." "That stuck in his craw so bad, the next day, he volunteered for the CIA." "He's probably the only spy we ever got for a single bottle of booze." "Well..." "I could be wrong." "We can't be sure he's been compromised." "Poleshchuk has a wife and children." " He knew what he was getting into." " Did he?" "Are you so sure?" "They'll haul him in front of a phony judge, they'll stage a mock trial, pronounce him guilty, sentence him, and then..." "They'll drag him out into a courtyard and put a bullet in the back of his head." "Sandy..." "It's not your fault." "I pushed to have him dead-drop the money inside the USSR." "If I hadn't, maybe he'd be free now, home with his family." " It was the right thing to do." " But it blew up on us!" "And we have no idea why yet." "Grimes, you stay on task." "You keep your nose to the grindstone, but mostly you keep everything in your life separate... work, family, assets." "You have got to compartmentalize." "I don't know if I can do that." "I don't know if I'm that person." "Well..." "If you can't, this job will tear you apart." "There is only one place to have a private conversation" " in entire KGB building." " ____" "And do you know where that is?" "Broadcasting the name of your employer in a bar might not be the smartest move." "Maybe we should take this conversation someplace else." "You and I, we could be the best spy team." "Just the two of us..." "Paris or maybe Tahiti." "I don't think so." "Oh." "I would be haunted forever... if I didn't at least try." "____" "He's part of my diplomatic staff and, by international law, has immunity." "You have violated the laws and integrity of the Union of Soviet Socialist..." "We have absolute respect for the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union." "We make every attempt to abide by your sovereign laws." "You are lying." "We know you run spies in my country." "This is a terrible insult to the Soviet Union." "We would not employ a spy within the sovereign borders of... 20,000 rubles was obviously..." " That is not the issue here." " ..." "A bribe..." "To get our citizens to betray their country." "If I have to get the White House involved, I will." "I believe he hung up, sir." "____" "You are being released from detention." "The charges against you still stand." "From this moment, you are persona non grata in Soviet Union." "You have two hours to collect your belongings and leave the country." "A letter to this effect has been sent to your embassy." "He's here, isn't he?" "In the building." "In another cell." "Russians have saying about Lubyanka prison." "They call it the tallest building in Moscow." "You know why?" "Because, from the basement, you can see all the way to Siberia." "Our case officer has been released from Lubyanka." "He has two hours to leave the country." "They're putting him on a plane right now." "All right." "Thank you." "One crisis averted." "I'll write to all station chiefs who handled GT Weigh in the past." "Let them know there's a possibility" " he's been compromised." " Good." "And, Sandy... ask them to double check their operations." "Employees with access, communications, tradecraft... compromise could have come from anywhere... a tiny mistake from any of them." "You tell them to look hard." "Uh, hey." "Austin said you had an immediate-action cable to go to Como?" "Uh, yeah." "You knew him." "I'm sorry." "We don't know that he's been lost." "You're right." "My mistake." "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "____" "I did everything you told me to do." "I took two hours going black." "I was alone well before I got to the park." "Is there any chance you missed your tail?" "I don't think so." "No, the tradecraft was good." "Did anything strike you as different, out of the ordinary when you left the embassy?" "They follow me out of that embassy every single day." "Every day, it's always the same." "It was the same last night." "The KGB... they're relentless." "What about at the park, before the arrest?" "Was there anything, you know, strange or...?" "I saw someone." "I thought it might have been the asset." "He waved, but then... it all happened so fast." "Let's take a 10-minute break." "One more thing." "My interrogator at Lubyanka kept asking me to confirm the name of the asset" "I was dropping for, but..." "I think he already knew." "If the man in the park was the asset, why would he come to the dead drop?" "The whole point of a dead drop is you aren't in the same place as your case officer, ever." "Maybe he was afraid he was under suspicion." " He waved to warn our case officer off the drop." " Sandy." "If that's the case, the KGB wouldn't be sure GT Weigh was a spy." "They'll need more proof." "Sandy, Sandy..." "This came in half an hour ago... from a low-level in-place source at Lubyanka." "Poleshchuk was executed yesterday." "We're gonna need a report to take to the seventh floor first thing tomorrow morning." "President Reagan said today that the great measure of success at the Geneva summit was his one-on-one conversations alone with Mikhail Gorbachev." "The Soviets tried in a couple of ways to stop the American program for a missile defense in space." "Mom, where have you been?" "I need to talk to you about Saturday night, because Benji Parrell wants to take me to this party, and..." "Not now!" "That was bad." "I'll go apologize." "Talk?" "You know I can't." "She's never around." "And when she is, she's so obnoxious." "I can't stand to be around her." "Yeah." " You ready?" " I think so." "Keep it short and to the point." "Art." "Sandy..." "Thanks for coming." "You know the director." "It's good to see you again, sir." "Sir, as you probably know, our dead drop to GT Weigh was intercepted two days ago in Moscow." "Our case officer was arrested, and we had reason to believe our asset had been compromised." "Last night, we learned with certainty that GT Weigh had been executed in Lubyanka prison." "We're now beginning the process of investigating the nature..." "Let me stop you there, Sandy." "I brought you here under slightly false pretenses." "While I do want the D.C.I." "to hear the details of the operation, more importantly," "I wanted to fill you all in on something else." "The compromise of GT Weigh is just the tip of the iceberg." "The situation is far worse than you can possibly imagine." "We've lost more assets in the last three months than at practically any other time in our history." "GT Taw was an extremely successful tap we'd been running on a KGB phone line underground in central Moscow." "It was a highly restricted case." "Very few people knew about it." "The line was difficult to access, but the intel we gained on it was invaluable... operational detail, officer names, locations, KGB strategic intelligence." "Three months ago, while an officer was retrieving tapes from a tapped line, an alarm sounded." "We had set up the alarm to warn case officers in case the tap had become compromised, which it had." "That was just the beginning." "Last month, a longtime asset for us in Munich was recalled by the KGB to Moscow." "They told him his grown son had a health issue which needed his immediate attention back home." "When the asset called family friends in the Soviet Union and established that the story about his son was false, we recommended he be exfiltrated immediately." "The KGB came after him, hard." "We got lucky, and the asset escaped unharmed." "He's currently in a safe house inside the U.S." "But GT Weigh, obviously, is not." "Either the KGB has gotten extremely lucky of late or we have a serious problem on our hands." "Whatever it is, we are getting hammered, destroying our eyes and ears inside the Soviet Union." "Not to mention killing people." "This needs to stay in the building as long as possible." "The President doesn't know." "The press certainly cannot know." "We need to figure this out fast." "Your team in S.E. Division needs to get their heads back in the game before we go completely blind and lose the damn Cold War." "Whatever it is, you will beat it." "You're the smartest, the toughest, the most heroic woman I've ever met." "And is that okay?" "I mean, do you want a wife who can be that tough, who compartmentalizes her life?" "Family here, work there?" "Who keeps secrets from the one person she loves most?" "We all keep secrets, Sandy." "Imagine how much we'd worry if we knew every single thing about Kelly's life..." "If we knew every word she said." "Sometimes a secret keeps the hurt away." "You know, I married you... because it was clear to me you were out to save the world." "Whatever it took, you would make that happen, and that I would be proud of you when you did." "Everyone in this family knows why you do what you do." "But do you know why you do it?" "Because you are a warrior." "Protecting your country." "You do it for us." "To keep us safe." "I have to go back to the office." "I won't be waiting up." "Morning, guys." "The man in the park who waved." "You been here all night?" "He wasn't trying to warn our case officer off the drop." "He was making sure our case officer saw him, noticed him." "You didn't get any sleep, did you?" "The asset was here when he waved." "The case officer said that the KGB came from around this building." "Well, look at the geography of the park." "The asset would have seen them." "He would've known the KGB officers were there, hiding, waiting, which means..." "He wasn't the asset." "He was a plant, a double." "Which means..." "The whole thing was a setup." "The KGB wanted to make sure that it got reported back to us that the asset was followed and arrested in the park... to make it look like they just figured out that Poleshchuk was a spy." "Maybe that they had suspicions, had him under surveillance, but they knew, and they must have known for a while." "I'd put even money that Poleshchuk had been sitting in a jail for a month when they executed him." "The whole operation in the park is meant to confuse us." "Pure theater." "And they'd only put on a play if..." "If they were covering up something more important... a lot more important." "KGB's hiding the true problem." "They have an in to the agency, Art." "They've cracked us." "Go home, get some sleep." "That's an order." "Oh, and, Grimes..." "See you tomorrow." "Hey." "Want to grab an early smoke?" "No." "I quit... for good." "You're leaving?" "Yeah." "Been here a while." "Tell me... solve GT Weigh?" "Not yet." "But we'll get there." "See you, Rick." "See ya." "Wow." "Nobody leaves this house without a nutritious breakfast." "What do they say in the commercials?" "The most important meal of the day." "Now, that's a school outfit." "These are pajamas, mom." "Yeah, well, they're appropriate pajamas." "I like them." "Gary?" "Love them." "Boys will, too." "Help yourself if you want any more." "A feast." "Maple syrup." "Yay." "They got an in to our setup." "We just got to peel back the layers and find it." "Your concept?" "No, a group came up with it." "Well..." "Grimes, mostly." "All right." "Let's get to work, then." "Stop the bleeding." "God only knows what they'll throw at us next." "Yes, my name is Vitaly Yurchenko." "I am phoning you from the telephone box in front of the embassy." "I am senior counterintelligence Colonel in the KGB... and I wish to defect."