Weather Over Mendoza

Weather Over Mendoza © 2022 John Michell.

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Printed in Australia

First Printing: November 2022

Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

www.shawlinepublishing.com.au

Paperback ISBN 978-1-9228-5066-9

eBook ISBN 978-1-9228-5071-3

JOHN MICHELL

Dedicated to Captain Sir Thomas Moore, whom ever

so briefly I loved and admired from across the sea.

Preface

Weather over Mendoza is a fictional novel featuring at its core a man reflecting on a past that has now caught up with him. Although set in a Cold War spy fiction framework, the narrative’s espionage references are broad brush leaving the meat of the story to be found in the surrounding text.

The primary inspiration to write such a book came from the fact that I was living in Moscow in 1991 and witnessed first-hand the collapse of the Soviet Union. That momentous event variously impacted vast numbers of people, creating a fertile setting for writers of fiction. The result in my case is a tale of reflection, of a man plunged into crisis and reliving his life in the rear-view mirror.

My main character, Adrian Ashton, has made many mistakes, some dreadful. Like the fictional Adrian, most folk in the factual world will also have made mistakes. It is this concept of generally good personality occasionally overcome by bad that I wanted to explore when devising the extenuating factors shaping Adrian. The aim is to leave readers pondering a philosophical question: is it just and right to think the worst of Adrian, or is there reason to be sympathetic to his plight?

John Michell

Australia, Spring 2022

Disclaimer

This book is a work of fiction. Comments or actions attributed to public figures are inventions or loosely based on historical events. In the latter case, summaries and accounts provided are not intended to be of academic quality, accuracy or balance. Otherwise, any character’s resemblance in the book to any individual living or dead is purely coincidental.

Nor does the novel attempt to document in depth the complex evolution of Soviet political and intelligence structures. This deliberately superficial treatment has led to some minor misrepresentations in order to avoid lengthy and unwieldy explanations of no relevance to the storyline.

By the author of The Far Grass

Chapter 1

Should he have pushed harder to go in 1964 at the time of Carstone? That was the question, especially now it had turned midnight and was Sunday 27 February 1994, six hours until The Sunday Exegesis article destroyed him. Thirty years earlier the Politburo ministers in the Kremlin had flatly refused. Bad timing politically, they said. The agent code named Mendoza must try to see it out. And after Feodor’s skilled hatchet job on Carstone had seen the American gassed and later pronounced dead on arrival at London’s St Thomas’ Hospital, the matter of Adrian Ashton’s defection never arose again.

Still, at the time Adrian was miffed by the perceived indifference to his safety on the part of the Soviet political leadership. Worse, it smacked of the KGB going along with the Politburo’s edict demonstrating yet again that Lubyanka, Feodor aside, did not rate him as an agent. Even then, Feodor’s becoming his benefactor was born of duty rather than a clear-eyed assessment of his spying worth.

Adrian was seated in the void of his London flat’s bay window. A Walther PPK pistol lay on the table along with an unopened letter, the weapon pushed to one side as if he were fearful of it. Adrian’s life flashed before his eyes. He could scarcely believe that his current, terrifying dilemma courtesy of The Sunday Exegesis was entirely of Feodor’s making.

***

The approach had come in November 1993, just shy of two years since the official dissolution of the Soviet Union. During the intervening period, the Russian Premier Boris Yeltsin had courted the West, including by releasing material from the now disbanded KGB’s archive. But as Yeltsin faltered and got drunk in public, the Russian people came to resent their country’s loss of prestige and influence. The period of openness paused, later to close. Nonetheless, the interlude did afford watchful Western journalists a glimpse of certain KGB secrets. And nobody would come to know this better than Adrian who by 1993 was six years retired from Britain’s MI6, his former employer against whom he had spied undetected for Soviet Russia for an astonishing thirty-three years, from 1954 on first joining the Secret Intelligence Service.

The November 1993 enquiry began with the trill of the intercom inside Adrian’s flat, piped through from the street-level companion system. From Adrian’s bay window the buzzer looked to be in his mid-thirties. He sported a corduroy jacket, designer jeans and an open neck shirt with the studied indifference that comes easily to Oxbridge types. A leather carry bag hung over the man’s right shoulder matched his scruffy-chic Italian shoes. Another, a big fellow who Adrian judged to be a security escort, accompanied the corduroy jacket.

‘Roger Hardwicke,’ a tinny voice said, ‘with an e. I’m an investigative journalist with The Sunday Exegesis.’ The paper was known to Adrian, a sanctimonious rag renowned for its self-proclaimed hard-hitting analysis and, according to others, a disregard for balanced reporting. ‘I’d like to discuss a story we’re doing,’ Hardwicke said, his voice insistent.

Adrian’s instincts raced. But he had learned how to control his emotions and after three deep breaths set about seeing off the unwelcome visitor with a minimum of fuss. ‘Sure,’ Adrian replied, trying to sound avuncular. He pressed the key symbol on his intercom. ‘Come up.’

Roger Hardwicke was only of medium height and weight but had the aggression of a prizefighter. He produced a single page document written in Cyrillic language, which he insolently thrust into Adrian’s hand.

‘Do you speak Russian, Mr Ashton?’ he asked, thumbs inserted in the front pockets of his jeans and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.

‘Nary a word,’ Adrian replied, smiling, which was pretty much the truth. But he knew enough to understand the date—3 September 1993. And it struck him as odd. He and Feodor had reached Moscow on 3 September 1944, after their epic journey across Nazi Germany and occupied Poland. Feodor had always referred to the date as marking the end of their long march, which for the emotionally contained Feodor was the equivalent of trumpeting. ‘It’s surely a coincidence,’ Adrian muttered under his breath, although his thirty-three years in the world of spying had taught him to be very wary of coincidences. He smiled even more brightly, trying to project an air of goodwill.

‘This document,’ Hardwicke said, declining to return Adrian’s warmth and instead pointing to the paper he held, ‘is the executive summary of a sworn statement duly certified by a magistrate of the Moscow City Court. It refers, inter alia, to a Russian agent, a KGB agent code named Mendoza. Mendoza was an Australian born mole in MI6 who spied for the Soviets for over three decades without detection, right up until his mandatory retirement age.’

‘And what would I know about that?’ Adrian asked adopting a puzzled look, all the while knowing this was unlikely to deter Hardwicke. But denial was the first rule of deflection.

‘I think you would know quite a lot about it, Mr Ashton,’ Hardwicke replied pompously, ‘principally because you are Mendoza.’

Adrian knew what was coming. Hardwicke was setting him up to refute the allegation while holding other evidence he would gloatingly produce to entrap his prey and provoke capitulation. ‘Mr… er… Hardwicke,’ he said, ‘off the record, I was a serving British intelligence officer for some years. Part of the work I did was directed against the then Soviet Union. It comes as no surprise to find there may be some reference to my name in the old KGB files linked to a nom de guerre attributed to me without my knowledge.’ Adrian smiled at Hardwicke in a no hard feelings sort of way. ‘Beyond that, I’m not at liberty to say more. The truth is I’ve probably said too much as it is.’

Adrian sensed rather than saw Hardwicke’s determination mount, recognising the journalist was an especially dogged character.

‘So, you refuse to comment on the allegation that you are Mendoza?’ Hardwicke said, jutting forward his jaw as he spoke.

‘That’s correct.’

Hardwicke confidently withdrew a larger wad of paper from his carry bag, at least six pages thick. He held the papers triumphantly in the air, just as Adrian had predicted. But the entrapping evidence was worse than feared.

‘This is the body of the statement to which I refer,’ Hardwicke said. ‘If you flick to the last page you’ll see it is signed by a man called Feodor Kozlovsky, Feodor Timofeyevich Kozlovsky to be precise.’ Hardwicke smiled smugly. ‘He was a KGB officer who made at least two rushed visits to England using various aliases when you were under threat, one in 1954 and another in 1964. You will know him well. You first met him in 1944 during the war when he escorted you out of Nazi Germany and eventually to Moscow. After you were trained by the Soviets and returned to London, he kept a close watch over your spying affairs.’

Adrian tried to stay impassive despite the wobbly panic rising from the pit of his stomach. No, no, he thought, horror-struck that his benefactor should be Hardwicke’s informant. Feodor would never betray me.

‘Oh, come on,’ Adrian said, feigning exasperation. ‘Some former KGB nobody on the make is your star witness? Give me a break. In the current climate these guys would sell their grandmother if they thought it would earn them a buck.’

Hardwicke laughed coldly. ‘Nice try, Mr Ashton, but no kewpie doll, I’m afraid. Personally, I find the details of Mr Kozlovsky’s 1964 visit to England the most interesting. He has stated, in a sworn document remember, that at the end of 1963 the CIA obtained information indicating a Soviet source in MI6 had compromised an operation in Nicaragua conducted by MI6 earlier in the year on the CIA’s behalf.’ Hardwicke paused for effect, letting Adrian stew. ‘But by end-1963,’ he continued, ‘MI6 was in a terrible bind and fiercely discounting the possibility of more spies among its number, what with the Soviet announcement the preceding July of Kim Philby’s defection to Moscow, hot on the heels of a cavalcade of other British traitors dating back to the early 1950s. Given that, in mid-January 1964, the CIA sent one of its internal investigations people to London specifically to run checks. His name was Kevin Carstone and his brief was to ascertain who of three possible MI6 officers, you being one of them seeing as you led the Nicaraguan operation, might be the Soviet mole. According to Feodor Kozlovsky, this Carstone soon reached the conclusion that you were the guilty party, the Soviet agent. You apparently hit the panic button and begged your KGB controller at the Soviet embassy here in London to do something. You even demanded to defect.’

Adrian shook his head, all the while dying a little inside. ‘Feodor, Feodor,’ he moaned silently. How could you do this to me? After all this time and all we went through together. ‘You’re engaging in fantasy,’ he told the journalist, trying to dismiss Hardwicke’s claims and end the conversation.

But Hardwicke was far from finished. ‘Your controller,’ he said, ignoring Adrian, ‘was so concerned with what the American Carstone had learned and its effect on you that he sent an emergency message to KGB headquarters in Lubyanka: Weather over Mendoza. It was a code meaning you were in imminent danger of discovery. The gravity of the situation prompted this Feodor chap to come to England to personally deal with the problem.’

Hardwicke’s eyes set hard as he beaded Adrian. ‘And the solution conjured by this Feodor fellow in 1964,’ he said, ‘was to murder Carstone and make it look like suicide. Feodor Kozlovsky told you all about this, Mr Ashton, but you did nothing. That makes you an accessory after the fact to the death of Kevin Carstone.’

Hardwicke studied Adrian, searching for a facial expression indicating he was about to admit everything. The journalist’s smug smile returned. He was congratulating himself, believing the forensic precision with which he had put the concluding accusation was responsible for the slump in Adrian’s shoulders. But Hardwicke did not know that, rather than yielding to acid questioning, Adrian’s devastation came from Feodor’s abandonment of him, after fifty years of rock-solid trust.

Adrian forced himself to return Hardwicke’s stare, it slowly dawning on him that his visitor was searching for corroboration, however flimsy, for Feodor’s claims. Then the story would be ready to go. A horrible thought engulfed Adrian. If Hardwicke didn’t already know about Sara from Manchester, he soon would; and she knew it all. To be sure, the CIA agent Kevin Carstone had not passed on Sara’s information to MI6, the every last detail she sold him all for a measly eighty quid, chiefly because Feodor staged his suicide before he could. But shortly before he died Carstone did give both the American ambassador and CIA station head in London a summary of Sara’s revelations. The MI6 hierarchy, however, anxious to avoid another spying scandal had warded off Carstone’s confidants, painting their second-hand information as hearsay incapable of amounting to proof, especially as it originated from a prostitute.

But it was also clear to Adrian that Hardwicke had the scent of a scoop in his nostrils. It was only a matter of time before he contacted either the ambassador or the former CIA station head. Then he’d beat a path to Manchester where he’d try to find Sara and grill her, just as the MI6 management should have done in 1964 if it hadn’t been so hell-bent on denying the presence of another spy in its ranks.

Wretched pessimism gripped Adrian. Hardwicke was bound to locate Sara, and she was sure to spill the beans for the right price. For a moment Adrian tried to hope that Sara was dead but couldn’t stomach the awful possibility. Maybe she’s immigrated to Australia? he wondered instead, able to live with that and building his grasping hope on the stories he used to tell her about his upbringing there. But in his heart of hearts Adrian knew he was indulging in wishful thinking. Someone as tenacious as Hardwicke could still track down Sara on the other side of the world.

Hardwicke’s voice broke through Adrian’s mounting despair. ‘You can either come clean and cooperate with us,’ he said, ‘in which case we’ll go as lightly as we can. Or you can decline to help and we’ll get after you, boots and all. Your choice.’

Adrian desperately wanted to be alone to think, to plot how best he might find a way out of this mess. In any event, he knew the journalist was lying about going easy—not when there were all sorts of prestigious industry awards in the offing.

All of a sudden a vision of Sara came to Adrian, clear as a bell. It was the day in February 1964 when he rebuked her after she told him that Carstone had also used her services, and he foolishly believed her. Most of all, Adrian remembered Sara’s soaring anger and how in no uncertain terms she told him their relationship was over. Resentment and fear caused Adrian’s decorum to desert him. ‘Get out of here you obnoxious hack,’ he shouted. ‘I wouldn’t give you the shit off my underpants you contemptible bottom feeder. Now piss off.’

The hitherto silent security guard stepped in between Adrian and Hardwicke before shepherding his client towards the door. Hardwicke stood on the threshold. ‘You’re a traitor, Ashton,’ he seethed. ‘And I fully intend to see you’re held to account. Be in no doubt of that.’ Hardwicke sniggered. ‘I’ll even personally deliver you a complimentary copy of the paper on the Sunday when we publish the story, to your door at 6 am on the dot.’ He laughed malevolently. ‘Until then you’ll just have to sweat.’ With that, Hardwicke turned heel and marched from the flat, leaving the door ajar as he went.

***

For fully a month afterwards Adrian grieved for Feodor, feeling like a yawning gap had opened in his life exposing him to an Arctic wind. Some days he wept or drank too much or didn’t eat; and other days he did all three. His torpor was broken by another ring on his intercom just before Christmas. It was the postman with a registered letter, which obliged Adrian to walk downstairs to sign for it. Otherwise, it would have lain scattered in his building’s dank foyer along with the rest of the mail he had not bothered to collect.

The light brown envelope bore the stamp of the Swedish postal service, giving away that the correspondence was from Feodor. For the first time in weeks Adrian smiled. Feodor always spoke English with a guttural accent. During his fallow period from 1947–53 he’d been exiled to the Soviet embassy in Stockholm. Thus his standard play was usually to pretend to be a Swede whenever in an English-speaking environment. Occasionally, for reasons of tradecraft, he would vary the guise, using Danish, Norwegian or even Czech identities—but never German.

‘Not after the Nazis,’ Feodor used to say. ‘Not after what they took from me.’

The letter was addressed to Comrade Mendoza. Adrian recoiled before realising the egregious security breach was nothing of the sort, not now that Feodor had revealed everything to Roger Hardwicke from The Sunday Exegesis. Inside his flat Adrian stared at the letter, unwilling to open it. He knew what it contained. It was Feodor explaining why he’d betrayed him.

Chapter 2

Adrian lived in London’s trendy Notting Hill, just off Kensington Church Street. Although born and bred in Australia, he had stayed in England after the war at the behest of the Soviets, something that was no great sacrifice given the trauma of his antipodean childhood. When Boxing Day 1991 formally marked the Soviet Union’s collapse, Adrian spilt no tears for the behemoth; he was long assimilated into British ways and unaware that Roger Hardwicke and The Sunday Exegesis were to come.

Adrian was an enigma, a recluse who didn’t like to live reclusively. So, sustained by his MI6 pension, he lived an inner city life without actually participating in it. This natural reserve accounted for his dearth of friends and had certainly won him few admirers when working in MI6, even if most of his co-workers did not understand his reticence stemmed from his uncertain upbringing. And now in February 1994, at nearly seventy-two, the leopard wasn’t about to change its spots.

In contrast, Adrian was far more outgoing with Sara on the occasions when he used to journey forth to Manchester to see her. Particularly amazing was that his affection did not wane after she told Carstone all she knew.

‘Always on the job, our Sara,’ Adrian had since quipped whenever consoling himself. ‘When she wasn’t selling her body, she was selling her mind.’ But he wasn’t quite so sanguine about the fallout from Carstone sounding the death knell for their relationship; he had pined for Sara every minute of each and every following day. Most of all, he missed the times when she was of a mind to kill two birds with one stone, the occasions when in addition to the succour she sold him she was also prepared to tolerate his sexual dysfunction—his oddity as he termed it—and pretend to be Heidi.

***

Adrian’s career as a Russian agent could best be described as disappointing, dashing the high hopes the Soviets initially held for him. This did not sit well with some in the Soviet security apparatus and inevitably there was talk of being rid of him. The high-water mark of Adrian’s spying was undoubtedly the exercise in 1963. He liked to think of it because he could still savour the taste of its success, a triumph made even sweeter by the fact that Kevin Carstone came along the next year and spoiled everything.

The 1963 accomplishment had its genesis in August 1962 when Adrian was made the director of MI6’s Central America section, a backwater job of fringe importance reflecting, like the KGB, MI6’s low regard of him. Adrian’s appointment, nonetheless, did come at a time when the Americans had their fingers deep in the Nicaraguan pie. For the preceding six years, a moderate president had ruled the Central American country. In this relatively tolerant environment, communist elements backed by the Soviet Union had emerged. By 1962 these movements, most prominently the so-called Sandinistas, were challenging the established order in Nicaragua and threatening to destabilise America’s southern sphere of influence. Alarmed at this, the US elected to provide support to the president’s younger brother, a hard line pro-American individual who headed Nicaragua’s National Guard. The American endgame intended for the younger man to supplant his elder sibling as president.

But October 1962 saw the advent of the Cuban missile crisis. For thirteen days the US and Soviet Union teetered on the brink of nuclear war. Eventually, the American President John F. Kennedy stared down his Soviet counterpart. On receipt of a face-saving US guarantee not to invade Cuba, the Soviets withdrew, taking their missiles with them. But privately shaken by the near calamity of an all-out nuclear conflict, Kennedy was now wary of the US being seen to overtly undermine a benign Nicaraguan presidency. Faced with the White House’s concern, the CIA’s solution was to enlist the assistance of MI6 to establish back channels through which support for the Nicaraguan leader’s younger brother could be delivered, secretly and deniably.

MI6 was leery of the idea, fearing that one