Berlin Nocturne, May 1954

 Another trip to the good old days of the Cold War with John B, this time something of a Berlin Noir theme with a Le Carre-ish plot in 1954 Berlin. The twist being that we were all the baddies - KGB, GRU and STASI.

As ever the session was enhanced by Johns provision of lovely maps. I found this one particularly helpful as is shows all the Allied and Soviet sectors and their respective HQs. 

A pretty motley bunch of spooks in dodgy hats assembled, naturally on the hottest day of the year so far, but at least it was set in May so we didn't have to wear coats as well. I was on the KGB team along with Mark and John A. Tim G, Russell and Micheal were GRU while Terry and Pete were Stasi. We all had team and individual briefings, and to add to the general paranoia, Stalin had recently died with Malenkov taking over and a purge currently underway of Berias adherents. 

The main issue confronting us was an apparent breach in security with various top secret items appearing in the hands of western intelligence. The KGB actually knew that it was because MI6 and the CIA had penetrated the comms infrastructure, but hadn't told the other agencies as we needed to protect our source, BLACKBIRD, at all costs on the orders of Moscow Central.

So, we needed to gently point the others in the right direction while protecting BLACKBIRD, and making sure to deflect any blame on us for leaks by pointing out moles. I was personally responsible for running BLACKBIRD and had to make daily trips to the western zone to liaise with him.

A few of us realised that this was based on Operation Gold, a brilliant intelligence coup whereby western intelligence constructed a tunnel to directly intercept Soviet communications. Here is a period map of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn - lots of tunnels in Berlin.

This knowledge didn't help much in the game as we could only work on the information we had available. In the end we came up with a cunning scheme to insert false information at various points in the system and try to determine the location of the leaks(s).

Things became rather fraught when my personal assistant was murdered via a staged suicide - she had access to BLACKBIRD material, and later major Popov of the GRU was actually killed in a shootout with French security forces while meeting a contact. Clearly the leak was getting out of hand.

Despite various technical measures, nothing really helped, and following Major Popovs demise, I was called to an urgent meeting with BLACKBIRD, who had been compromised. Moscow Centre approved his extraction, and my team devised an operational plan which may have borne a distinct resemblance to that in 'Funeral in Berlin'. It went rather better than the GRU mission had done. I rolled and 11 on 2D6 which helped, so BLACKBIRD aka George Blake was successfully evacuated to Moscow.

Following that we were able to inform the other agencies of the security breach and we were able to reroute our comms securely. irl the KGB sat on the knowledge of Operation for Gold for 18 months (!) to protect Blake.

The one thing we didn't managed to do was identify the mole in our midst, Major Burkhardt of the Stasi who was a double agent. We had our suspicions but could never get enough proof, but overall a good outcome for the KGB as we got Blake out. We even managed to purge a Beria traitor in our midst (Mark) who ended up in the gulag after unilaterally jamming the GRU wireless network. Less good for the GRU as they lost their main asset (GOLDFINCH) and Major Popov into the bargain. It transpired in the Kripo debrief that my PA had been murdered by neo nazis, but that will be another thread in a later game.

That was an excellent game, greatly aided by team breakout rooms and extensive use of private messaging which meant lots of secret stuff going on.