Episode 3 The Company

-WOMAN:

-Who am I then?

Tell me that first,

and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up.

If not,

I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else.

PHONE: 'Gene, is that you?

'Yes, it's me.

'Ah, dear boy, it is a comfort to hear your voice.

'Do you realise, Gene, this is our 17th conversation?

'You are all I do, Gene.'

Every six months, I am obliged to move to a new apartment.

I settle in, wait to be contacted, only to move on again.

'I think you are reason I remain alive.'

Gene, the Old Man wants you to come home.

Home?

'You mustn't fear going home, dear boy.'

But I am afraid I am bearer of bad news.

It is your father, Gene.

'He's not well.'

-TV:

-The American military headquarters in Vietnam.

Once known as Pentagon East.

Now the huge building was a last ditch holding area,

to avoid the threat of surface-to-air missiles.

-Sir.

-Thanks, Rose.

-You're welcome.

PHONE RINGS

McAuliffe.

Mr McAuliffe, this is Manny Ebbitt in the Operations Center.

What's with the "Mr McAuliffe", Manny?

Wanted to make it official, Jack. Looks like we got a walk-in.

'OK, I'll come over.'

-MANNY:

-Last week at the Smithsonian, this woman strikes up a conversation with a Russian diplomat.

They chat and end up having lunch.

Tonight, out of the blue, he shows up at her doorstep.

-How did he get the address?

-He knew her name.

After a long talk, she decides to trust him and lets him come up to her place.

And he tells her his whole story.

She agrees to help and calls us.

What does he want?

What any defector wants. Asylum.

Gonna go through my underwear, too?

Ma'am. Be outside if you need me, Sir.

Would you mind waiting in the other room?

I'd mind if I thought someone would notice. Good luck, Sergei.

No. I am... I'm not wanting that.

OK.

Let's chat then. Off the record,

what is your job at the embassy, Mr Kukushkin?

Political attache is my diplomatic cover.

I am rank of captain in KGB.

-You may call me Sergei.

-And what do you want with us, Sergei?

Political asylum in America.

For me, for my wife, for my seven-years daughter.

What made you decide to come over?

I am disillusioned with corruption, with inefficiency of Soviet Socialist model.

I believe in Mother Russia, but not Soviet Russia.

No offence, Sergei,

but it sounds kinda thin to me.

My wife, she is heart sick.

She is taking medicine for many years, but is getting worse.

I want her to have good doctor - American doctor.

-She needs surgery?

-That is correct.

Why didn't you come before? Why now?

Borisov, KGB resident in Washington, is schoolmate of mine from Lomonosov University.

From him, I know KGB has what you call a mole inside the CIA.

Impossible for me to come over before.

The mole would tell KGB.

Me, my family would be...

Two days ago, after much whisky,

Borisov is telling me both mole and cutout of mole are out of city.

This is moment I must act.

If you can identify the mole, Sergei,

we could bring you and your family over

and make sure that the KGB never found you.

I do not think even resident knows his identity, only that he exists.

But you already know he is not in Washington. Narrows down list.

And I am able to provide...

other particulars.

By telling us this mole and his cutout are out of the country,

Pinnacle gives us the first plausible detail.

That could make him a genuine defector.

When's this, uh...

-What name are we giving this guy?

-Pinnacle.

When's this Pinnacle gonna give us some information, Jack?

He gave me one item - the code name of the mole - Sasha.

When we bring the Russian and his family to the other side,

he'll give us the first initial of Sasha's family name,

as well as the dates of a previous vacation that he took.

The dates correspond to a trip that Starik was on as well.

Pinnacle will give us corroborating paperwork to verify this.

With these two pieces of information,

-we should be able to nail his identity cold.

-Jim, assessment?

There is a chance this could be a genuine defection.

But even if he is genuine, Starik is more likely dangling some bait in front of my nose.

Well, let's take the worst case. Let's say Pinnacle is bait.

He's offering us the mole - Sasha's identity -

as well as dozens of other juicy titbits.

We should be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Almost impossible to do. If Pinnacle is real,

we'll need to go through a lengthy process to establish this fact.

If he is a dispatched agent,

Starik is going through a great deal of trouble

and we'll need to find out why.

We have two weeks, according to Pinnacle.

That's when Sasha returns.

Debriefing a defector is an art unto itself.

It's not simply a matter of asking the right questions,

but not asking the right questions too quickly.

Very delicate game - very delicate.

I'd like to bring someone in on this.

Defections take time, Sergei.

-How much time?

-Five, six weeks.

Sasha is back in Washington before five weeks!

In five weeks, I am dead man!

Calm down, Sergei, there's a way out of this.

There is no way out of coffin!

PHONE RINGS

-What should I do?

-Does anyone ever call you this late?

Just my mother a few times. Could be her.

-Answer it.

-But what if it isn't her? What do I say?

Don't say anything. You're a woman having an affair with a married man.

You'll naturally be evasive, secretive.

Hello?

No, there's no-one here by that name.

You're welcome, goodbye.

The SK is having her phone number.

They are checking on me to see if there is woman here.

He had an accent.

Your people trust you as much as we do!

Thank you. You did very well.

So, this is how you play me, Jack?

-You make me to give you now, everything.

-No, not everything.

Give us the first initial of Sasha's last name,

and when he was absent from Washington before.

Is everything I have to bargain with!

How do I know you are not leaving me out in the cold? Huh?

How can I not know?

You give us Sasha, you'll never have to worry about your well-being again,

or that of your wife or daughter.

How can she visit doctor?

KGB will get suspicious.

She'll complain of a toothache.

It will require several visits to a dentist on our payroll.

At the dentist's office, there will be a top cardiologist from Walter Reed Hospital waiting for her.

The Company has roughly 20,000 regular employees

and 4,000 contract employees.

Clandestine System alone has 5,000 -

4,000 in Washington - another 1,000 spread over the globe.

You're loving this, aren't you, Jim? Taking your time, drawing it out.

Your moment on the stage after years sitting in a dark little room

with your little bits of information.

Torriti, we'll hear him out.

You will want to hear me out, Harvey.

Because my tentative conclusion

is that Pinnacle may be that rarest of breeds - a genuine defector.

You want to walk us through the information, Jim?

Information. Yes.

Number one.

Pinnacle claims "Sasha" is a Russian speaker.

Two.

Sasha's last name begins with the letter...K.

The computer came back with the names

of 244 Russian-speaking Company employees

who have a last name beginning with the letter K,

all of whom are expected to be away from Washington till Sunday.

Which...

brings me to the point that I've...

put on the back burner for 13 years.

You need the patience of a saint for counter-intelligence.

Nurturing seemingly... meaningless bits of data,

amassing and collecting thousands of unrelated facts,

creating and interlocking...

..a picture which really only comes into focus

through your own interpretation.

And all the while, you hear voices whispering behind your back.

Mother's obsessed, they say. Paranoid.

A conclusion searching for confirmatory evidence.

Believe me, I heard it all, I heard every word.

The information, Mother?

I always knew...

..if we could find Sasha's cutout, we could find Sasha.

And that is what I've been waiting for all this time.

In 1961,

the FBI stumbled across an old Communist named Max Cohen -

aka Kahn.

Kahn provided the perfect cover

for a Soviet cutout who lived above his store

who delivered liquor to hundreds of clients in the Washington area.

The cutout went by the name of Dodgson, which, curiously,

was the real name of Lewis Carroll,

author of Alice in Wonderland.

It makes you wonder if Starik isn't, like Lewis Carroll,

creating worlds within worlds

for all of us to get lost in.

Dodgson got away, but I didn't forget him. Not for a moment.

All these years, nurturing bits of data,

seemingly meaningless pieces of evidence.

You have to have the patience of a saint.

James.

I looked over Kahn's delivery invoices for the past ten years,

and discovered that some time in the '50s,

Dodgson had been delivering to a double agent -

my friend and former colleague - Adrian Philby.

With Philby gone,

it seemed logical to suppose that Dodgson would act as a cutout

for Philby's replacement.

His replacement?

Sasha.

Starik knew he could sacrifice Philby.

Sasha was still delivering valuable information.

Checking through Kahn's clients

who had been on the receiving end of deliveries

during the previous ten years,

I was able to identify the names

of 167 full-time Company employees

and 64 contract employees.

You matched the liquor delivery list

against the names of Company employees

who are currently out of the country,

whose last names began with K, and who spoke Russian?

That's pretty damned clever, James.

It seemed too good to be true.

It was.

None of the names cross-referenced.

It may have looked like a dead end to the ordinary eye.

But not to mine.

Last Saturday, as my wife was on the telephone

making restaurant reservations in her maiden name -

security precautions.

It hit me Sasha could have a wife.

Sasha could have his wife order the liquor from Kahn's, using her maiden name.

In the six years between Philby's disappearance and Max Kahn's arrest,

I've compared the maiden names

of the wives Dodgson had delivered liquor to,

against the suspects from the Pinnacle leads.

It's brilliant!

So what was the maiden name?

You're not going to like it.

Why?

Was it great? Tell me everything.

It was wonderful. The French countryside, the food, the wine.

Everything, except for the part

where your father went off to get cigarettes and got completely lost.

-What happened, Daddy?

-Your mother thought I had a brief encounter with a local peasant girl,

but really I just couldn't understand people's directions!

I'm not quite convinced that he didn't have an affair with a French girl.

I can't speak French well enough to order lunch,

let alone lure some stranger into bed.

Mr Kritzky, I've been instructed to hand deliver this eyes-only letter to you, Sir.

-What is it, Daddy?

-The director wants to see me right away.

Doesn't say why.

Sir, I have transportation waiting.

What department are you with?

I'm with the Department of Internal Security, sir.

What's going on, Leo?

I don't know, but I'm going to find out.

Erika, would you drive your mother home? Sorry, darling.

I'll be home in time for dinner.

Hey!

What is this?

Lean forward, Mr Kritzky, and put your head between your knees.

I will not, you little bastard!

Place your clothes on this table one article at a time, very slowly. Start with the left shoe.

You want me to strip?

Why?

No talking.

We must search your clothes, then do a cavity search.

A cavity search?

This is absurd! You call William Colby DCI, immediately.

You tell him that Leo Kritzky is being held here.

He'll clear up any confusion you...

Now, shall we start again, Mr Kritzky?

Your left shoe, slowly, please.

How about...

..we begin with your father?

Jim, it's me, Leo. Leo Kritzky.

Start with your father.

They strip-searched me for God's sake.

Can I have some water, please?

Water in the bowl.

You're out of your damn mind.

You're crazy if you think I'm going to drink out of a toilet!

When you get thirsty enough, you will.

Bill, for Christ's sakes, this has got be a blind alley.

I've known Leo since Yale.

We rowed together. We roomed together.

I'm the godfather to his children.

I would stake my life on him.

And what if it's true, Jack?

It isn't.

It can't be true.

All those ops that went sour on Torriti...

Your assets in Berlin - the professor and the ballet dancer.

-What was her name? Rainbow, Sniper?

-Rainbow?

Kritzky worked with The Wiz in the '50s, he knew all about your Budapest mission.

He was Bissell's right hand man during the Bay of Pigs.

Who better, who better to be a KGB mole

than the man running the Soviet Division?

This kind of thing's happened before. Philby, for one.

Leo's wife, she was the White House legislative aide during the Johnson Presidency.

Just imagine the kind of inside stuff he could have gotten on Vietnam!

It makes me sick to my stomach.

You're going to stay in this room

until you've answered all my questions, many times.

We're going to go over and over your life,

before and after you joined the Company.

Weeks, months,

it's really no skin off my nose.

I'm not in any hurry.

Would you like to begin with your father

or should I come back tomorrow?

You son of a bitch.

My father's name was Abraham Kritzky.

He was born in the Jewish quarter of Vilnius, in November of 1896.

Emigrated to America in the 1910 pogroms.

Go on.

He got a job working at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory

sewing bands inside hats.

He was there when the famous fire of 1911 broke out

and killed 150 seamstresses.

He got out with his sewing machine strapped to his back

when firemen hacked open a locked fire door.

Did the experience make him bitter?

Yeah, of course it made him bitter.

Did it turn him against capitalism?

Jim, you know, I went over all this when I was recruited.

The Company knows everything. There are no secrets.

My father's a Socialist, it's common knowledge.

He was a bleeding heart, which wasn't a federal crime

until the House Un-American Activities came along.

You were born October 29th,

1929, the day...

The day the stock market crashed. Are you going to read something into that too?

By then, your father had started a small business.

The crash wiped him out.

Yeah, the banks called in his loans.

He'd bought the Brownstone on Grand Street, and he lost everything.

And then what happened?

I could come back...

tomorrow, after my 11 o'clock conference call,

if you'd prefer that.

He jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge.

They found his body washed up under the pier the next morning.

Did capitalism kill your father?

No, my father killed himself.

Did capitalism kill your father?

Capitalism in the '20s and '30s created conditions

that caused a great many people to kill themselves,

including the capitalists

who threw themselves out of Wall Street windows in 1929.

You going to interrogate their sons?

Mmm...

TURNS PAGES

Jim, my wife is going to start asking questions

when I don't turn up at home.

By now, the director will have phoned Adelle

and apologised profusely

for packing you off to Asia on such short notice.

"Something's come up," he will have told her. "You'll understand if I don't provide details, Mrs Kritzky."

Your wife will have taken the news bravely.

Of course, she will inquire as to when you might be returning.

Well, when might he be returning?

-'It could take some time.'

-The director will have said.

I've instructed him to maintain radio silence,

so he may not be able to speak with you any time soon.

But I will call you personally, when I have more to tell you.

-She might say...

-Will he be in any danger?

"None whatsoever," the director will reassure her.

"You have my personal word on that."

Thank you, Sir.

-Mommy!

-I'm coming, Max.

Papa...

Yevgeny!

Olive? Afraid I'm out at the moment.

Twist? Haven't got that either, old boy.

Got ice.

Plenty of that in Moscow.

Starik send you round to check up on me, Eugene?

Is that what you call yourself?

No, Starik doesn't even know that I'm here. I brought you these.

Ah, well...

that's awfully kind of you, Eugene.

I do love to check up on the latest from Savile Row.

Good Lord, prices have skyrocketed.

How's Russia treating you?

Get anything I want in Moscow.

Easy as falling off a log.

Just draw up a shopping list.

Mango chutney from Harrod's, beluga from the Caspian.

It's more upscale than your average English slammer, mind you.

I first saw the light of communism way back in Cambridge,

but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd be living here.

Who'd have thought I'd be living in America?

They tell me I need round the clock minding,

to prevent MI6 from...

knocking me off,

but what they're really afraid of

is that Jimbo Angleton may have turned me into a t... triple agent.

By God, if I was a triple agent,

I'd be up nights trying to figure out which side I was working for.

Starik didn't send you to check up on me?

I miss the great game, Eugene.

Well, thanks for the drink.

Come back and see me again before you go back,

won't you?

Love to chat about...

what's happening these days in the colonies, as it were.

Yes, I'd like that.

Goodbye.

Let me take a look at this hero of Mother Russia.

You have not changed, Yevgeny.

For a long time, I have been planning Kholstomer.

Since the 1950s, the KGB has been retaining hard currency

from the sales of our national gas company,

as well as oil sales abroad,

and placing the proceeds into shell companies.

The amount in these shells now total more than 63 billion in American dollars.

63 billion?

The beauty of Kholstomer

is that the dollars are held in banks in the city of New York.

The abrupt sale of our 63 billion

will suck in people and institutions -

speculators from all over the world.

Asian and European Central Banks, and the American stock market itself.

The American economy will crumble.

Yes, can you see it, now, Yevgeny?

Americans, British, French -

the whole western world will suffer an economic holocaust.

And the peoples of these nations,

rising up to demand a government of equality, of workers.

All these nation crying out for change, Yevgeny - for communism.

With the CIA crippled,

American minds will be open to a campaign of Communist ideals.

And the Soviet Union's example of equality, communality,

and hope for the good within us all

will shine like a beacon for the world to see.

I know that you are lonely, homesick, and at times,

you may wonder if this is all worth it.

It is, Yevgeny.

And the Soviet people need you to go back.

Back to the front lines for one last battle.

Do the initials "LK" in the upper right-hand corner look familiar?

Jim, I think that I need a doctor,

because when I pull on my hair, it comes out in clumps.

They never turn the lights off and it's driving me insane.

Your name turns up in a great number of op orders

that were blown or compromised.

Let's go through them, one by one.

Please.

Please, stop.

Just...please stop.

Please stop.

Did you betray Jack McAuliffe's assets in Berlin, codename Rainbow,

-codename Sniper?

-God, no. He's my best friend.

Did you betray the Cubans at the Bay of Pigs?

They turn these lights up brighter when you leave.

And it's burning right through my eyelids and I can't sleep.

Please, Jim, just let me sleep.

I can't sleep.

KRITZKY SOBS >

Please let me sleep, Jim.

Only tell the truth and I'll let you sleep as long as you want.

So, what am I supposed to do, Jack? I can't I put a time limit on Mother. It's impossible.

'He's been chasing shadows since Philby was exposed.'

He's decimated the Company's entire Soviet Division in this obsession.

We don't even know if Sasha exists outside of his head!

Jack, If you don't believe that Sasha exists, then your defector, Pinnacle, can't be the real deal.

So, which is it? Is Leo Sasha or is Pinnacle a disinformation agent?

It is not the fittest,

but the most deceptive orchids that survive.

Most orchid species

depend upon their ability to misrepresent themselves to insects.

They deceive them

into landing on them and then, spreading their pollen to other orchids.

This Trichocereus orchid...

so perfectly mimics the underside of a female fly,

down to the hairs and even the odour,

it actually triggers a mating response in passing male flies.

Jim, I need to know if your judgment has become clouded.

Jack...

..deception is everything.

It's an age-old art - arcane, underestimated by kings and leaders.

Our very survival depends upon our ability to see the truth

that lies behind this subterfuge.

Counter-intelligence is the weapon we will put all our faith in,

in order to win this Cold War.

Leo would never betray us.

As I once thought.

"My best friend, a double agent!

"It's absurd beyond belief."

But I was deceived.

We were all deceived by his, I must say, elegant artifice.

And what if you'd caught Philby?

Did you want him telling the world

that his best friend was his A1 source?

That James Angleton was giving him top secret files?

I think that is the last thing that you would want.

Maybe you warned Philby, told him to run.

The damage was done, but he could do a lot more damage to you, Jim.

A lot more.

All those lunches at La Nicoise, talking over state secrets that went from your mouth into Starik's ears.

Scandalous. You'd be out of a job.

An embarrassment, forced into early retirement.

Well, my, my.

You certainly are the Sorcerer's apprentice.

Before Adrian...

betrayed me...

..I always knew where I was.

Now I'm lost.

We're all lost, Jack.

We're lost in the wilderness of mirrors.

My superior had much to drink three nights before.

He left safe open. While he was sleeping, I look inside files.

I see something that might help you, Mr Jack.

-What did you see?

-Sasha went on previous trip to meet with Starik.

A trip in 1972, to Nova Scotia.

Do you know this place?

Yeah. I know Nova Scotia.

I check files.

Starik went on trip in autumn of 1972.

You see if perhaps dates match trip your man in custody took.

You check files.

Thanks. I'll check the files.

Angleton, you bastard! Get me food and water in here, now!

Good cop?

No, he's genuinely upset.

Still believes he's innocent.

If he'd just accept the truth, he'd be wringing his neck right now.

Listen to me, this doesn't have to end

with you spending the rest of your days in prison.

Why would I go to prison?

It's delicious.

Cold.

Do you believe it? Do you believe I'm Sasha?

We know it, Leo.

I'm here to offer you a deal.

How do you know I'm Sasha?

We have a Russian defector, Pinnacle.

This Pinnacle identified me by name, said Leo Kritzky is Sasha?

He said that Sasha's last name begins with the letter K.

Said he speaks fluent Russian.

Said that the Russian spymaster, Starik,

was just in the South of France visiting an agent.

In September of '72, Sasha met Starik in Nova Scotia.

I was on a bicycle trip with Adelle in Nova Scotia in September of '72, you know that.

Yes, Leo.

Did it ever occur to you that Starik was feeding you a phoney defector with phoney information?

It would be easy to look at my daily schedule and concoct some kind of scenario.

No.

There are too many coincidences.

-Did you flutter him?

-We will flutter him when we get him over for good.

Pinnacle will never take a lie detector.

He'll be run over by a car or mugged in an alleyway

or whisked back to Mother Russia for some reason that sounds plausible,

but he won't be fluttered because he will never be brought in.

He won't be brought in because he's a phoney sent to convince Angleton

-that I am Sasha.

-If you're not, Leo, that means he's still out there.

-Yes.

-If that's true, then why hasn't Pinnacle been put on ice by the KGB?

Jack, he hasn't been put on ice because Pinnacle is a fake.

And Sasha, if he exists, knows it - they're all in on it.

Starik, the defector, Sasha.

And they're all manipulating the mind of one paranoid dinosaur, James Jesus Angleton.

Who do you believe? I was your damn crewmate!

I believe Pinnacle, Leo.

Thanks for the drink, Jack.

I think I'd like you to go now.

Leo, look at the mess that you're in.

Think about your family.

Admit it, and we'll double you.

We will turn you against Starik.

The only way I'm leaving this room is in a bag, or walking out that door a free man.

Jack...

..go to hell!

There's no reason to think he was coerced into getting on the plane.

The bastard just up and left.

Pinnacle could have buttonholed a policeman and demanded asylum.

The fact that he didn't speaks for itself.

He was going of his own free will.

Yes, well. That's the way it was supposed to appear.

The safety of his wife and daughter

was being held over his head as a threat.

He had to go back or else he would lose his family forever.

Our informant at Moscow's airport has positively identified Kukushkin.

So, he's in Moscow for certain?

Not only that.

Informant says that two men grabbed him, brought him to a car,

-and placed him inside none too gently.

-Oh, God.

We were so careful!

We have Sasha locked up.

So how did they know? How in the hell did they know?!

KNOCKING ON DOOR

"Traitor Kukushkin trial.

"Spied for Americans.

"Betrayer of the Motherland."

You'd think it'd get easier over time.

What would?

Losing people.

People who trusted you.

People you cared about.

What should we do now, Jack?

There's nothing we can do.

Let it go.

Can you do that, Manny?

PHONE RINGS

McAuliffe.

Thought you'd want to know, Jack.

We just got word that Kukushkin was executed this morning by firing squad.

OK, Manny.

Thanks.

The hell, Harvey?

I didn't know you took up golf.

It's one of the things you do when you're about to be retired.

Have a seat, kid. Get yourself a drink.

Get one for me too.

It's 11 in the morning, Harvey.

I love the fresh air.

I'm getting healthy.

So, what brings you to my little retirement community?

Something woke me up last night. It was two things, actually.

First, Angleton hasn't broken Leo.

What else?

Well, number two is actually something Leo said to me

that stuck with me.

He said Pinnacle would never be polygraphed.

He said Kukushkin would be hit by a car, or mugged in an alleyway,

or whisked back to Mother Russia with some excuse that seemed reasonable.

So Leo was right.

Yeah. And now this thing is eating away at me night and day.

Was Kukushkin really sent to me just to convince Angleton that Leo was Sasha?

To keep the heat off the real Sasha?

Yeah, was I like an insect to one of these orchids Angleton talks about,

lured by Pinnacle to finger the wrong guy?

Ach!

I think it stinks.

So, now what?

You want to know if Kukushkin was really executed

or if the whole thing was a sham?

How do we know it even happened? All we have is Pravda to tell us.

And if Kukushkin is still alive?

Kukushkin was a disinformation agent sent to frame Leo, and Leo is innocent.

-And the real Sasha's still out there somewhere.

-Exactly.

I gotta go talk to the Rabbi.

These photographs are Kukushkin, his wife and his daughter.

And here's his last known address,

safe house in Moscow.

But if he was not executed,

if this whole thing was theatre,

there ought to be a Kukushkin out there somewhere.

If your people can find out anything,

-my people would be very grateful.

-How grateful, Harvey?

Would the whereabouts of Klaus Barbie be of any interest to you?

Oh!

The Rabbi's people used a tried and true method.

They got the forwarding address off a letter

sent to Kukushkin's old address.

After that, it was just a run of the mill surveillance - just waiting around.

Kukushkin is alive and well and living in the town of Irkutsk.

I know it's hard for us to accept, but it proves...

Nothing. Not a thing.

It proves nothing.

-How do you explain this?

-Quite simply.

Starik knew I was getting close to Sasha.

So what does he do?

He gives us what we believe is a genuine defector.

And just when I'm getting close, he pulls the rug out from under me.

Makes me believe that I've got the wrong Sasha.

That the real Sasha is still out there, somewhere.

So, of course, we put Leo Kritzky back to work,

and Starik has got his mole back in our operation.

Created and executed by a grandmaster spy.

Absolutely brilliant.

Jim...

Leo Kritzky will be released.

Leo Kritzky...

..is Sasha.

Leo.

Angleton, all of us, have made a horrible mistake.

Does that mean I get to go home?

Yeah, buddy.

Home.

What the hell were you guys doing?

They were protecting the Company from its enemies.

APPLAUSE

All right. All right.

Leo Kritzky's devotion to duty,

his loyalty to the Company, and his grace under fire

have set a high standard for all of us

and for future generations of CIA officers.

Now, it's the nature of things that only a handful of us are aware of the details of your ordeal, Leo,

but all of us owe you a debt of gratitude.

APPLAUSE

When I came on board as a young man,

it was with the intention of serving the country

whose system of governance seemed to offer the best hope for the world.

I imagined it would take the form of dramatic feats

of espionage and counter-espionage.

I have since come to understand that serving in the trenches of the Cold War is no less important.

As John Milton said, "They also serve who only stand and wait."

I appreciate this...

..all of you.

Now I'm gonna get back to my desk,

-and get on with the tedious, day-to-day business of winning the Cold War.

-Leo, welcome back!

If you never forgive me, Leo, I understand.

There's nothing to forgive.

You're my best friend. Always have been.

CROWDS CHEER

I... I have an announcement to make.

James Angleton, to my great regret,

made his intentions of retirement clear to me earlier this morning.

I don't need to tell anyone here

that his contributions to the Company

are nothing short of legendary.

Jim, you've worked the trenches and front lines of this war

long before it was a cold one,

and if any old warhorse deserves a pasture, it's you.

Any parting words?

Lenin once said...

"The West are wishful thinkers,

"so we will give them what they want to think."

The Soviets have a master plan -

feeding layer upon layer of disinformation

to the wishful thinkers of the West,

to make them think that we are winning the Cold War.

Nothing could be further from the truth, gentlemen.

I have determined that several world leaders

are either in the employ of, or the pawns of, the KGB.

Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of England,

Olaf Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden,

Willy Brandt, Lester Pearson, former Prime Minister of Canada,

are all KGB assets.

Roger Hollis, head of MI5, is a long-time Soviet agent.

Averell Harriman, the former ambassador to the USSR

and former governor of New York, has been a Soviet agent

since the 1930s. Henry Kissinger is a Soviet agent.

They all defend and advocate

the Soviet strategy of detente.

They are part of the disinformation scheme

to lure us into a...

..position of comfort...

..so that we will believe we are winning the Cold War.

Over the last 20 years,

the CIA has transformed from a network of informants...

..double agents, case workers, to a shadow of that former self.

All the handiwork

..of a Soviet mole inside the CIA, named Sasha.

Starik and Sasha have made certain the world view of America

has shifted from a beacon of hope and justice...

..to a tyrannical,

power-mad, colonialist juggernaut.

Of course, these facts were not handed to me on a silver platter.

I teased them...

I teased them from the wilderness

..with excruciating...

attention to the minutiae.

It takes the patience of a saint.

Philby, the KGB, Sasha, they've tried to discredit and destroy me for years.

And now, of course, they have.

Gentlemen, you do not realise you are surrounded by a wilderness of deception.

Thank you, Jim.

We will try our best to muddle through without you.

You will be missed.

I know it's you, Sasha.

The Rabbi found Kukushkin far too easily.

Starik never would've been that sloppy. Never.

I bear you no hard feelings, Jim.

-Yes?

-Whatever you said scared the hell out of them, comrade Starik.

They should be scared. Gorbachev is a pawn.

He's being used by the Americans.

The Politburo are terrified the Americans will wipe out

our second strike mobile train platforms,

leaving us vulnerable to invasion.

How did you do it?

The facts spoke for themselves.

The Americans' Able Archer plan is for a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

I embellished nothing.

The Cold War must continue, Comrade Colonel.

I know how your mind works.

I am not swayed as easily as the rest of them,

but I must congratulate you, Starik.

-You would have made a brilliant chess grandmaster, if you ever played.

-But I did.

I did.

Sasha.

Starik has convinced Gorbachev that America is planning a first strike

in an operation known as Able Archer.

You and I both know the whole idea is pure nonsense.

The Russians have a mobile second strike capacity

aboard railroad flatcars - 12 trains with four ICBMs apiece,

shuttling around 300 miles of track.

The Americans know full well that a second strike

launched from the Russian rail platforms

would annihilate the US Eastern seaboard.

What happens to the world then, Eugene?

I don't know, Sasha.

You told me long ago what Starik said to you.

That we should promote the generosity of the human spirit.

So tell me, Eugene,

what does launching a pre-emptive strike to provoke nuclear holocaust

have to do with promoting the generosity of the human spirit?

I'm trying to make sense of this, ladies.

The new computers can analyse so much data that we can run all the old leads that were never followed.

Because it was too time consuming.

There just weren't enough man hours...

woman hours - and the stuff's just laid around forever.

So, we analyzed old transcripts of Radio Moscow from the 1950s.

To look for patterns or repetitions -

phrases appearing out of context...

Because KGB agents abroad might be receiving coded messages

-from these shows.

-Yes, I get that part.

We found something in the old transcripts.

A pattern in a nightly quiz show.

-You did?

-I adored Alice in Wonderland as a kid,

and in the 23 years this radio program has been airing -

that's 1,200 50-minute broadcasts,

the Lewis Carroll quotations have appeared 24 times.

They instantly caught my eye because I could answer all the quotations.

The Russians wouldn't be so sloppy as to use a radio program to broadcast messages.

But we learned in counter-intelligence seminars

that sometimes these codes are merely recognition symbols -

special sentences to let the agent know

that there'll be something appearing for him later on in the program.

-And after every Lewis Carroll quotation, there was an announcement of a winning lottery number.

-Huh!

Angleton once told me that Soviet agents were given American 10 bills

to use in some kind of a code system that we just couldn't break.

We think they took the serial number off the bill

and subtracted it from a lottery number that was broadcast on a radio.

And presto - they'd wind up with a phone number of a contact.

I still don't see how you'd get a phone number unless you had

the particular serial number of the ten dollar... You found the bill?

Not the actual bill, Director.

My team hunted down all the serial numbers from every 10 bill printed between 1945 and 1951,

the likely date that a Soviet agent would've used for a code bill.

Six years of bills?

Over 67 million dollars' worth.

We narrowed it down by assuming that the Soviet agent

would've lived in Washington,

so we used area code 202 as a Rosetta stone.

The computer told us the eight digit serial number on the bill

would have to begin with a three and a zero.

Cut down the number of bills to a manageable size.

It was a matter of burning the midnight oil

to narrow it down to a single 10 bill.

We took the phone numbers we got from the Russian Radio program,

matched them with phone records from DC.

We came up with a Polish immigrant.

She's been moving to a new apartment with a new phone number

almost every year since 1955.

She's 69 years old, never had a job

and it's not clear where she gets money to pay the rent.

We think she's the go-between.

And I think she will lead us to Sasha's cutout.

Maybe she's dead.

Let's go check and see if she's dead.

She's not dead.

I heard the toilet flush a half hour ago.

She's got her favourite soap operas... Oh, wait a minute.

Keys.

Look, I think she's going for the door.

-She's saying goodbye to the cat.

-This is it. Let's go.

CAT MIAOWS

She's at the checkout counter.

I got it. Gimme the camera.

-One more.

-Yup.

'She's half a block away.

'Do you want me to slow her down?'

Negative. We're out.

I need a picture. You got it?

Go.

We turned her place upside down.

Found these -

coded phrases with their coded equivalents.

And one time cipher pads to break the codes.

We're waiting for Sasha's cutout to call.

I'm also gonna need some repairs on a 1952 Bentley.

'The windshield is cracked, and needs to be replaced.

'And the 1957 Bel Air GS...'

Got him! Pay phone, 8th street and 11th.

..is no longer for sale, in case interested parties ask.

I will pass message along, Gene.

NSA is working on the codes from the phone call right now.

I think it's best we wait and see if the cutout calls back.

And if he doesn't? Pick her up, flip her?

No, she could lead us to Sasha.

A cutout who moves around for 23 years, who has his own cutout to shield his identity.

This guy is too important, whoever he is.

COUGHING

How many people have you shown this to?

No-one. Just you.

I can't make heads of tails of it. It's a list of contact numbers that don't exist, as far as I can tell.

And a series of dates.

-Numbers are not contact numbers.

-What are they?

Bank accounts.

SWIFT codes.

What you are seeing, here, Jack...

..are the threads of Kholstomer...

It's not so much Kholstomer's 63 billion, it's the panic that would ensue from a sudden sell-off.

If fund managers and central banks and foreign entities

get the impression the dollar is in free fall,

Kholstomer could have devastating consequences worldwide.

I'll get the President to use his influence at the Federal Reserve to back the dollar on D-Day.

Flood the media with inside stories about Federal Reserve's resolve to support the dollar.

Let the world's financial community know

-the Reserve has an almost unlimited ability to back American currency.

-Will that be enough?

Angleton said it himself - prevent the panic, and we crush Kholstomer.

What about Sasha? Won't he know, warn the Russians not to implement Kholstomer?

Sasha won't know as long as this stays in this room.

Why not let it leave the room?

Leak it to the Company.

Let Sasha know we're on to Kholstomer, let him postpone it.

No, we can't let Sasha know.

Kholstomer would always be out there to come back and haunt us.

We need to deal with this now.

PHONE RINGS

Eugene, is that you?

-Yes, it's me.

-I didn't think I would hear from you until next month, my dear boy.

-Do you need more repairs...

-Starting trace.

-You have to send a warning to the Old Man immediately.

-I'm listening.

The other party knows about his intent to sell the 220 SEB Coupe Mercedes with the white finish.

They know about the price, the date of sale, all of it.

'He has to postpone...'

-He's on East 8th and Maplecrest.

-'I will let him know immediately.'

'This time we got him.'

-'What's his name?

-Renting an apartment under the name Lutwidge.'

We're checking background.

He's careful.

Switched cabs twice and took two different buses coming home.

-And the old lady?

-We nabbed her before she could spill the beans.

With Lutwidge's contact gone, won't he get suspicious?

I'm really not too comfortable leaving this guy out there for so long, Jack.

Let's wait just a little longer.

Tell me about this cutout, Jack.

He hasn't left his apartment in two days.

Couldn't get a clear photo of him yet.

Neighbours think he might be a writer.

Tends to keep to himself.

We... We looked in the Library of Congress

to see if he had written anything, or published anything.

Turns out the only thing that came back under his name

was Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

What was this cutout's name?

Goes by the name of Lutwidge. Gene Lutwidge.

The writer of Alice in Wonderland.

Lewis Carroll, we know.

Lewis Carroll's pen name...

..is Charles

-Lutwidge Dodgson.

-Dodgson?

The delivery boy we never caught...

..from Kahn's liquor shop.

HE COUGHS

The same delivery boy, Jack,

who made deliveries...

to other people.

Leo was cleared.

Not by me, he wasn't, Jack.

You came to me for advice.

Snatch him up.

Snatch Dodgson up. Now.

Pick him up.

Mr Lutwidge, you are gonna be taken to a secure...

Yevgeny?

Well, Jack, you can't still be mad about that raccoon coat.

Oh my God.

I'm going to say a name to you, Leo.

OK.

Yevgeny Tsipin.

Yevgeny!

He...

slept with my girlfriend at Yale. Did you know that?

We just arrested him for espionage.

Right here in DC.

You're joking?

Yevgeny's a spy?

We think he's Sasha's cutout.

Wow!

ICE CLINKS IN GLASS

-Haven't thought of that guy for...

-A few days, Leo?

-What do you mean?

-Yevgeny was the delivery boy from Kahn's liquor store.

Yevgeny delivered your liquor.

To your house, Leo! If he was at this door, wouldn't you recognise him?

-Is this just a coincidence?

-Relax, Jack, I can explain.

-Please do.

Please do, Leo, because God help me,

I got you out of Angleton's prison, and if I was wrong, if I was wrong,

and you killed the Cubans, and you betrayed the Hungarians,

and if you killed Lili, Leo, if you killed Lili...

I don't know what the hell I will do to you.

You were Yevgeny's friend, too. I'm not accusing you of being Sasha.

You and Yevgeny shared a girlfriend. Stella Bledsoe.

I ran a check on her, Leo. I never forgot her name.

She was an American Communist who got caught a while down the road

for trying to recruit an undercover FBI agent.

She kept tabs on Yevgeny at Yale. And she recruited you, Leo, didn't she?

Coach Waltz recruited us, Jack!

Coach Waltz recruited us to the Company.

Stella recruited you to the KGB.

Tell me Stella didn't...

GUNSHOT

Sasha!

I need an ambulance to 1544 Victory Lane.

A man's been shot.

JACK GASPS

Jack, I never took a penny.

I want you to know that.

I did it because I believed in serving the country

whose system of government offered the best hope for the future.

-That system was socialism, Jack.

-Adelle...

-She knew, didn't she?

-Yes, she did.

But I'm not proud of it.

I was assigned to her to get secrets out of her father, but guess what?

I fell in love with her, Jack.

I did, I swear.

You're scum, Leo!

The Company trained secret police in Argentina, Chile, Iran, Iraq,

Dominican Republic, the list is as long as my arm. This is the business we're in.

So, here we are, now.

You think this is what I had in mind when I joined?

You think this is what I signed up for? You're a hero to me.

I'm sorry, buddy.

You won't catch me. I have contingencies. You'd be wasting your time.

I'm not gonna come out in Pravda and tell the world who I am, I'm just gonna slip away.

I wanna protect my children.

That's why I stayed, to protect my kids.

You're a traitor, Leo! Leo!

Go to hell!

SIRENS APPROACH

-BANGING ON DOOR

-Paramedics, anyone in here?

Anyone here?

Harvey?

SNORING

The extraordinary, if restrained, action taken in the Persian Gulf early this morning

was overshadowed through the day

by scenes such as Wall Street has never witnessed.

As the Dow Jones Industrials took off on a fear-fed free-fall

to close down a record 508. 32 points,

panicked traders worked through lunch hours in a desperate but losing attempt

to keep up with tickers that rolled up an all-time high volume.

CBS news looks at this devastating day for the market.

So how bad was the fallout?

It made a ripple, but America always bounces back.

We traced the cash to the KGB connections, the foreign banks

-and the agents of influence that Starik's been using all these years.

-You shoulda been there, Jack.

Tessa and Vanessa went ballistic.

They tracked down 100 banks that had major influences on the stock markets.

We knew that our target of five or six banks with connections

to Kholstomer would be in there somewhere.

In the end, we had to call in the only person in the CIA

who could to recognise the invisible threads

between the disparate names on the list.

He narrowed down the list

to five bankers in different parts of the world.

All these guys had connections to the KGB at some point in their life,

but it was only Angleton who could see past the forest for the trees.

First target was Tokyo Bank International.

Another bank on the London exchange.

The next two Angleton identified as heads of prominent banks in Saudi Arabia and Johannesburg,

both with powerful influences on their exchanges.

The last guy, maybe the ringleader, that was Harvey's department.

I recognised the name of the bastard who worked for the Soviets before the war.

He was running Banco Ambrosiano until it collapsed in the '80s.

Disappeared for a while

only to turn up as Banco Di Sancto Spiritu,

with a whole new disguise and even more power than before.

He was running the Vatican Bank.

We think that's where Starik was laundering his funds.

Those Russian bastards were so naive

they actually thought 63 billion would have an impact on the market.

Plan might have worked in the '50s, but now!

On average, the daily turnover is 1.9 trillion.

KNOCKING ON DOOR

Kholstomer is over.

It's finished.

KNOCKING ON DOOR

KNOCKING ON DOOR, SHOUTING

Why would I want to help the CIA, Jack?

Because you'll rot for the rest of your life in your cell, Yevgeny.

No-one will know, no-one will care.

We'll bury you in a pauper's grave.

Not even a going away party for an old schoolmate?

I want you to find him for me.

Who?

You know who.

Now, what makes you think that I know where he is?

We'll release you. Time served.

Send you back to crumbling Mother Russia.

The KGB will keep you on ice for a while, that's par for the course,

but they'll let you go once they know you have no agenda.

When that happens, get in touch with Leo,

then contact us and let me know where he is. It's a simple assignment.

No short-wave radios, no codes to decipher.

YEVGENY LAUGHS

You're actually serious about this?

Why in the hell would I do that, Jack?

The KGB is trying desperately to hold on to its control,

even as Gorbachev brings us closer to detente.

We have some very disgruntled KGB employees flooding into America,

all looking for asylum,

all bringing actual information.

The great game is coming to a close, Yevgeny.

Gorbachev released 3,000 prisoners of the state last October.

Azalia Ivanova was in that group.

After rattling around in prisons and insane asylums outside Moscow,

she served 21 years in a Siberian gulag.

And I have something else.

This is her arrest and deportation order, straight from the Kremlin.

She was not given a trial.

It's signed by a P Zhilov.

I would like you to meet an old friend of your mother's, Pavel Zhilov.

Starik, to my friends.

-TV:

-'After the fall of the Berlin Wall,

'Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George Bush met in Malta.

'The historical Summit was a turning point in East-West relations

'and viewed as the official end of the Cold War.

'The meetings have continued,

'with vows of friendship and cooperation replacing antagonism.

'The world pulled back from the fears of nuclear annihilation

'that prevailed in the '60s and '70s.

'However, rumblings of discontent have been heard from Soviet hardliners within the Politburo,

'who feel Gorbachev is weakening Russia's stability

'as a world superpower.'

Hello, Sasha.

Hi, Eugene.

Or are you back to Yevgeny again?

Come to keep me company?

You're not doing a very good job of hiding out these days.

What's the point?

How did you find me, anyway?

KGB.

I told them I wanted to...

..pay you a social visit... and they didn't seem to care.

Nobody cares about me any more, Yevgeny.

Someone from Gorbachev's inner circle

occasionally asks me my opinion about something going on in America.

Somebody's replaced us on the front lines now.

Gorbachev's corroded the power of the KGB.

The KGB are chomping at the bit to get rid of him,

to get back to their old ways.

Can't decide if he's trying to reform the communist system

or do away with it entirely.

MUSIC BLARES

It's not the Russia I grew up in.

It's not the ideal I fought for all these years.

LEO COUGHS

Jack wanted me to find you.

I thought this was a social visit.

Jack's obviously got something you want, or you wouldn't be here.

It's nice of you to let me know, thank you for that.

We owe each other that much, comrade.

-PHONE RINGS TV:

-The Soviet army is on the streets of Moscow

and the worst fears of supporters of democracy have now been realised.

Yeah?

It's a coup d'Etat, Ebby.

I just got word that Kryuchkov still has Gorbachev in a dacha, loaded up on Vodka and pills.

The coup leaders are telling the world Gorbachev is medically unfit to lead the country.

It's all crumbling around him.

What's the word on the streets, Jack?

This is an opportunity.

-To do what?

-'To back Yeltsin.'

And Gorbachev, whether or not he gets out of this thing, has lost his balls in the coup, Ebby.

He's been castrated in the eyes of the people.

This guy... Yeltsin could do it.

He wants liberal reform. He's a radical, but he has the heart of the people in his hands.

-He could bring democracy to Russia if we're there to support him.

-If he can take power.

-Yeah, if.

Try to give me reports on the hour. Find out what you can.

Yeah, will do.

KNOCKING ON DOOR

-TV:

-Thousands of people, young and old alike,

have poured into the streets in a desperate last minute attempt

to demonstrate their support for democracy in a country that has seen so little of it over the years.

The question on everyone's mind is the location and condition of President Gorbachev himself.

Rumours of his arrest have swept from...

You should be more careful, Comrade.

Jack?

Do you still dislike summer so very much?

Yes, I still dislike summer.

A face I never thought I would see.

Do you have time to hear an apology from a friend?

Russia has changed.

I can feel it, all around me.

Makes me want to...

Makes me want to keep living.

I'm glad for you, Azalia.

For me, there's...

..very little to live for.

Except for you.

I am trying to find a way to hate you...

..hate you for leaving me the way you did.

But I cannot. I cannot, Yevgeny.

Even after all these years.

Is it too late?

It is... It is a source of pain to me to think of all the years we wasted.

To think of the years I spent in the gulag...

..wondering if you were still alive.

Hoping.

Can we not try?

We can try.

Yevgeny...

We can try.

So, d'you get it done, sport?

He was already dead.

I wanted to.

I wanted to kill him.

But... I just couldn't.

You're a better man than me, sport.

So, the great game goes on.

With or without us.

Without us, I guess.

You think we made a difference, Harvey? Any difference at all?

God, I hope so, sport.

Nowadays people have short memories.

They forget there was a time when the Goths were at the gate.

You and me, kid, we put our warm bodies on the firing line and we turned 'em back.

-You truly believe that?

-You bet I believe it.

Something like the Cold War has to have a moral, otherwise what was it all about?

It was about the good guys beating the bad guys.

We sure screwed up along the way.

Yeah, but we screwed up a lot less than they did, which is why we won.

The Soviet Union wasn't a country. It was a...

It was a metaphor for an idea that looked good on the drawing board, but in practice, it was flawed.

Let me tell you something -

a metaphor is a lot harder to slay than a country,

but we clobbered them in the end.

-Yeah.

-Don't look so glum about it!

You got nothing to be ashamed of.

You gotta remember what it was all about.

It was always black and white, kid.

Right versus wrong.

There were good guys, and there were bad guys.

Which side were we again, Harvey?

We won, didn't we?

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