John Daniel

This became known as the Farewell Affair.

The French made a film about it.

That's Willem Dafoe playing a CIA officer.

CIA got these files from the French in late 1981.

Most of the people working for the Russians were arrested, but in some cases they were used to feed disinformation back to the KGB.

We mentioned the failure of the Soviet space shuttle program in the last episode.

There was reportedly also an explosion on the Trans-Siberian pipeline because of this dead-end technology transfer.

And it's quite possible that information from the farewell dossier about what the Soviets were looking for is used by CIA technicians as they prepare fake science for this operation in the Philippines against the GIU.

And the Soviets are increasingly desperate because these old sources have been blown, and they need to get new ones.

And you never saw Vladimir again?

So they organise to meet and get their stories straight in a way that corresponds with their covers.

So, drinking in the fleshpots of Manila.

This is standard practice for intelligence officers.

If they have a feeling they're being followed or their spider senses are off or whatever, they can break off the first meet and go to the second.

And if you're a NOC who's been warned that your operation might have been compromised, that the GRU have killed another guy in a similar situation in Europe, so you're already feeling jittery out there on your own in the hinterland of Manila, and your collaborator doesn't show at the first meet,

it could be a long couple of hours waiting for the alternate.

This is yet another instance of Kit Bennett having to arrange the truth in such a way that it would hopefully work for him.

He was allowed to tell his wife some of what he was doing, but he couldn't share much of his work with her.

Bluntly, she didn't have the security clearance, so she didn't need to know.

As he says, ultimately, that would lead to his marriage breaking up.