Operation: Gummi Bear

October 6th. 1981.  Langley, Virginia.


Command Sergeant Major Stevens flipped open his steno pad, “Morning. State your name, agent.”

“CIA Special Agent O’Brien, Jeffrey.  I’ll be referring to my submitted notes, and I’ll be going off memory as well, which is still pretty good.  Morning, Gladys, stop smiling and keep up.”

Gladys barely cracked a smile over her stenograph.

“First,” O’Brien stated gleefully, “the Brits nearly blew this.  So, so close.”

Stevens glared at him over his glasses, “Start with your British contact.”

“Right.  Dick Buchanan.  Total drip. You wouldn’t look at him twice, or even once.”  O’Brien winked at Gladys.  “Perfect spy.  Slightly shorter than average.  Pudgy, not quite fat, and an extremely meticulous report writer.  He’s the handler of one Aleksandr Nobokov, a Russian double agent.  He took him in June of last year; met with him twice, I think.”
O’Brien scanned his notes.  “Yes.  August 14th, in Minsk, and then…October 29th in London.  Now, keep in mind, Nobokov is the biggest fish MI6 have landed in a decade - flipped him in Copenhagen in ‘76.  He is top level, groomed, foreign intelligence KGB, with intel to match.  MI6 changed his handler only once - minimizing risk.  Darlington cultivated him, and now he’s Buchanan’s.”

Stevens looked up, “And that’s Agent Richard R. Buchanan?”

“Yes.  MI6 kept promising to help Nobokov defect - to get his wife and kids from Moscow.  It was always ‘one more thing.’  But now Buchanan was to meet Nobokov in Bergen, Norway.  Well, call it cutbacks, or efficiencies, but he’s told to take the HMS Bulldog Destroyer, coincidentally shipping there.  His cabin is right beside the Captain’s.  They docked on September 14th with crew on shore leave, employing only a few petty officers as security on the ship.”

Stevens glanced at Gladys, who finished typing. “Okay, go on with the meet.”

“The Huset Pub, downtown Bergen.   Buchanan arrives by taxi, takes a corner table.  Nobokov is ten minutes late.  Their discussion is mostly redacted in the report.  Nobokov gifts the agent a bag of Gummi Bears - not the real ones, but the awful Soviet knockoffs, a long-standing inside joke to remind the Brits how badly he wants to defect.

The two discuss the symphony, Norwegian folklore, fine art, blah, blah, blah.  But here’s where things go off.  Buchanan gets smashed.  I mean, staggering drunk.  The barmaid explained he had only two beers, then a shot of vodka with Nobokov, yet a local had to help Nobokov load Buchanan into a taxi.”

Stevens leaned forward, “So they leave in a cab together.  Where?”

“I tracked down the cabbie - he first stops at the, uh, ‘Det Hanseatiske Hotel’ - Gladys, you’re on your own for spelling.  Nobokov pays the cab fare and enters the hotel.  Cabbie then drops Buchanan two kilometers from the dock.  A petty officer on the Destroyer logs Buchanan entering the bow of the ship, walking, but not well, 11:44 p.m.

Buchanan reports getting sick in his berth, he rips open the bag of gummies and tries to eat one, gets sick again, and tosses the bag in the bin.  Buchanan reports, however, his aim is slightly off, and some spill on the floor.”

“This is in his report?” Stevens asked.

“Like I said, no detail spared.  At 0900 he gets a coded communique from the captain to meet Nobokov for lunch across town.”  O’Brien leans in.  “It’s this lunch where Buchanan gets the following intel:  that three Destroyers and two Corvettes from the Soviet Red Fleet were headed to the south of Finland, armed for conflict.  Our satellites showed otherwise:  Tripoli.  Libyan coast.  Not three Destroyers.  Six, and two submarines.”

Stevens interjected, “But the Brits didn’t take the bait.  Why?  Did they have access to our intel?”

“God no.  It was Buchanan.  Hungover as he was, he knew it wasn’t from drink.  At least not the Norwegian ale.  After Nobokov dished about the Red Fleet - what we now know is flagrant disinformation, he did something uncharacteristic; he crossed his legs.  The highly refined Russian wouldn’t usually do this.”

“Okay, so?” Stevens grew impatient.

“Remember, Buchanan’s an ace.  He was suspicious of the gesture, and stared at Nobokov’s foot.  That’s when he saw it.”

“What?”

“The knockoff Gummi Bear stuck between the treads of the Russian’s boot.”

Stevens took off his glasses.

O’Brien continued, “Tests later in London revealed traces of benzodiazepine in Buchanan’s bloodstream.  Nobokov drugged him, tailed him, waited for him to pass out and snuck aboard the Bulldog to photograph whatever he could in the captain’s quarters - a black bag op.  This is where he learned the intended destination of British Destroyers Bulldog, Dainty, and the Albatross - all scheduled in four days to Tel Aviv.  Sure enough, within two hours, the Soviet Red Fleet changed course with a bearing toward–”

“Tel Aviv.”  Stevens said dourly.

Gladys piped in, “Nobokov was flipped again by KGB.  He’s a triple?”

O’Brien sipped from his water glass and continued, “Nobokov wasn’t to know that the first room he entered was Buchanan’s, until he saw him sprawled out on his bed. The Russian made a quick exit and unwittingly stepped on the Gummi Bear near the trash bin as he went.”

“But that seems careless.” Stevens added.  “To carry the evidence from the ship, then to reveal it?”

“Indeed,” O’Brien held their eyes.  “Too careless to be an accident.  Nobokov is an elite KGB spy.  He knows what Buchanan knows.  It wasn’t code, but it was.  This is a desperate man.  His wife and children, now under threat of death in Moscow, ever since he was discovered to be a spy for MI6.”

“So he carried out the KGB mission, but also signaled that he was compromised.” Gladys added.

“Exactly.” said O’Brien.

There was a prolonged silence in the room.

O’Brien cleared his throat, “MI6 is heading up a plan for the extraction of Nobokov’s family from Moscow and they need our help.  It’s called…  “

And Gladys dutifully typed, “OPERATION: GUMMI BEAR”.