Gorsky was not only the chief of NKGB operations in America but also the first secretary at the Soviet embassy. He had made a name for himself in London, where he had controlled the "Cambridge Five," the British spies who counted Kim Philby and Donald Maclean among their number. Gorsky had followed Maclean to Washington when the British diplomat had been posted to the embassy there. Once in Washington, Gorsky supervised agents, cultivated presidential advisers, and recommended assassinations. There was something about him, Elizabeth said later, that made "shivers run up and down your spine." She had demanded to see someone at the top, and she had gotten her wish.

Thus began Elizabeth's relationship with her last - and most powerful-NKGB controller. In an elaborate pas de deux, the two champion manipulators tried to placate, deceive, and outwit each other. A survivor of the Stalinist purges, Gorsky plainly thought that he could handle this difficult American woman. Like his predecessors, though, he had no idea of the strength and shrewdness of his adversary.

Gorsky seemed to view Elizabeth as a child, and, like all bad parents, he attempted to solve this discipline problem with threats and bribes. The bribe came first. At their second meeting, in New York in November, he told her it was a memorable day. The top Communists in the motherland had awarded her the Order of the Red Star. If she ever went to Moscow, she would only have to show her star to be "wined and dined and treated like a princess."

The honor was not a good choice. Although she appeared to respond with "cordial gratitude," Elizabeth was actually seething beneath the surface. She knew better than to go to Moscow, and some silly Russian decoration meant nothing to her.

Gorsky had better luck with threats. At their third meeting, a week before Christmas 1944, he summarily informed Elizabeth that he was taking over all of her sources. "I'm afraid our friend Golos was not too cautious a man, and there is the risk that you, because of your connection with him, may endanger the apparatus," he explained.

Meanwhile, she could decide if she wanted to continue with the underground in another location with new contacts. That was that; no more debate, no more angst. The decision had been made without her."

The loss of her sources was upsetting enough, but then something else happened that night to anger Elizabeth even more. The two participants told dramatically different tales of what happened next. In her version, Gorsky sexually harassed her. He stared at her like "a trader about to decide whether to buy a horse" and said, suggestively, "I like you personally; I think we could work very well together." She was overwhelmed with "nausea."

In Gorsky's version, though, his lonely, oversexed agent made a pass at him. She purred suggestively that he reminded her of her dead lover and talked of how she would like to start a family. In a panic, Gorsky wired to Moscow that his bosses should reconsider the matchmaking possibilities for his amorous agent. He wanted someone else to absorb her considerable sexual energy."

It is impossible to know for certain who was telling the truth. But Gorsky did not have a reputation for sexual adventures, while Elizabeth did. Moreover, he told his version of the event at the time, whereas she told her side much later. In any event, whether he insulted her by propositioning her or by rejecting her proposition, the net result was that she felt insulted. That insult only strengthened Elizabeth's conviction to leave the Soviet service.

Over the course of the next month, Gorsky forced Elizabeth to turn over all of her contacts to him. She was exhausted, "mentally, and physically, from the strain of leaving them." They were, after all, her friends.

Earl Browder's complaint about Elizabeth Bentley backfired, leading to growing Soviet distrust of Browder, not Bentley. She encouraged this process by reporting to the NKGB in October 1944 - falsely perhaps - that Browder had changed his view of Soviet intelligence and now called Bentley's work "dirty blackmail," urging American Communists to keep their distance from Russian operatives. Moreover, according to Bentley, Browder had complained that although he had rendered great assistance to Soviet intelligence, the USSR's operatives had done nothing for him. Whether or not linked to this latest turn in Bentley's loyalties, Washington station chief Anatoly Gorsky informed her in November that she had been decorated with the Order of the Red Star. In response to the news, Gorsky informed Moscow, "she expressed cordial gratitude and assured me that she would work indefatigably to justify the reward."

By the following month, however, Bentley's emotional restlessness resurfaced dramatically. In a meeting with Gorsky where they exchanged Christmas presents, Bentley informed her Russian colleague that he reminded her of Jacob Golos. It was difficult for a young and lonely woman to live without a man, she told him, noting that she thought more and more often about having a family. A flustered Gorsky, plainly hoping to avoid entanglement, immediately cabled Moscow stating that it was urgent to find a husband for Bentley. He repeated the concern expressed by Akhmerov six months earlier: "Think over the issue of (Bentley's) marriage," Gorsky told his superiors.

Complaints about Elizabeth Bentley's tradecraft had increased by then, especially her intermingling of public and secret activities. In December 1944, Moscow learned from other American agents that Bentley's associates in the U.S. Shipping Corporation knew of her intelligence work, that she failed to recognize other Soviet agents following her, and that she was dangerously careless in her work: "Sometimes (Bentley) used her apartment for meetings with agents, and some... have her home telephone number." Because the members of her network knew one another, "the entire organization is in such a state now that, if somebody began even a very superficial investigation, the entire group with its direct connections would be unmasked immediately," one of her adversaries wrote the station." Virtually all of the professional operatives who dealt with her had come by then to similar conclusions.

Such inattention to the crucial details of her responsibilities as a courier may have reflected the primacy of personal matters for Bentley during the spring of 1945. Elizabeth's NKGB associates discovered that she had found a new lover, an American named Peter Heller.... In conversations with NKGB supervisors, Bentley continued to complain about her "lack of a male friend to satisfy her natural needs."

Gorsky continued questioning her about Heller, and Bentley "told us a number of details about her lover which left no doubts that he was an agent of the FBI or one of "Arsenal's" (the U.S. War Department's) counterintelligence."

Gorsky urged Bentley to halt the romance and take a vacation, which she apparently did, "but it is difficult to say to what degree she left her lover."

Bentley's own description of Peter Heller confirmed Gorsky's worst fears. Heller described himself as a lawyer and National Guard reserve officer who worked as an investigator for the government, verifying the qualifications of people recommended for promotion in the U.S. Army - in other words, a military intelligence operative. "Overall now," Gorsky informed Moscow, "(Bentley) is a serious and dangerous burden for us here. She should be taken home (to the Soviet Union), but how to do it, frankly speaking, I don't know since she won't go illegally."

Even Bentley had concluded by then that Heller had worked for the FBI at some point, telling her that he had taken part in investigations of Communists and knew the Russian language. As the romance continued, so did planning by her NKGB colleagues for Bentley's imminent (if involuntary) departure from the United States. "Some time ago," Gorsky reported to Moscow on September lo, "we began preparing her for removal from New York to another city or country to continue work for us there." Gorsky suggested that Bentley relocate "in a country where entry visas for Americans are not needed-Canada, Mexico, Brazil, etc. She has refused to leave New York illegally."

Bentley told Gorsky that she wanted only to return to work at the U.S. Shipping Corporation, which she had left earlier that year. But Gorsky still believed that she should be taken to the Soviet Union. (Wartime restrictions precluded any obvious "legal" means of removing Bentley to the USSR.) Moscow responded on September 14, again urging Gorsky to convince Bentley to end her affair with Heller, but cautioned against further discussion with her about leaving America: "She understands what this is all about."

By that time, the NKGB believed (correctly, as it turned out) that Bentley "is evidently being actively cultivated"' by U.S. counterintelligence agents and therefore Gorsky should not meet with her as frequently. Despite the warning signs, Moscow's response to the situation remained surprisingly paternal, suggesting that Bentley be offered another position and, if necessary, financial help: "After she is back from vacation, use her only on new talent-spottings and recruitments.... It is important for us to load (Bentley) up so much that she has no time to think too much and no time to practice romance, etc. Try to avoid using her for contact with old agents known to her and valuable to us. It would be good to give her in marriage, even with the help of known Communists."

The situation did not improve. Gorsky reported on September 27 that Bentley had returned from vacation and met with him "semi-drunk." She declined Gorsky's suggestion that they meet at a later time and stated that "if I broke up the meeting, we would never see her any more... and that she drank in order to tell in a drunken state that which she did not dare discuss soberly.

Recently ALES (Hiss) and his whole group were awarded Soviet decorations. After the Yalta conference, when he had gone on to Moscow, a Soviet personage in a cry responsible position (ALES gave to understand that it was Comrade Vyshinsky, deputy foreign minister), allegedly got in touch with ALES and at the behest of the military NEIGHBOURS (GRU) passed oil to him their gratitude and so on.