Mehens deceiving

Screenplay
September 03,2019, ISBN 978-5-00077-949-1

Treatment

Logline

Cheating the CIA, the main goal of the operational plan of the KGB general. The sacred victims of the plan were the lives of the crews of Soviet nuclear-powered submarines, agents of the KGB and the GRU.
The action of the film comes against the background of real historical events that nearly led to a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Some events and characters are fictional, any resemblance are purely coincidental.
Synopsis

-1-

Text: 10/27/1961, the Barents Sea, near the island of Novaya Zemlya.

U.S. Navy submarine. The commander raises the periscope. He watches a Soviet Navy submarine B-130 and sees a torpedo go to the old target ship. There’s a nuclear explosion. He orders to send a radio message to the US Navy headquarters.

The U.S. Navy submarine commander reports on nuclear torpedo tests to Admiral George Anderson Jr., chief of naval operations.

In the Oval Office (White House, Washington, DC) we see US President John F. Kennedy, US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Central Intelligence Director Allen Dulles, and chief of naval operations. Admiral George W. Anderson Jr. reports that the Russian submarine is firing nuclear torpedoes.

MCNAMARA
Mr. President! We received a radiogram from the captain of the submarine. The Russians tested a nuclear torpedo.

KENNEDY
Khrushchev fooled me! In Vienna, he spoke to me about the peace, while he was testing nuclear torpedoes.

MCNAMARA
Lies for Khrushchev, this is the norm of his life, which we underestimate.

The US president rearranged his suit jacket, straightens his shoulders. Rises from the chair.

KENNEDY
Dulles! Do we have information about Russian nuclear torpedoes?

Pause. Slaps his hand on the table. Looks into the eyes of CIA Director Allen Dulles.

KENNEDY
(continuing)
More ... How many nuclear missiles and torpedoes Soviet Union has? Prepare me a report by morning.

-2-

We see Colonel of the Soviet military intelligence (GRU) Oleg Penkovsky in the apartment of the chief marshal of artillery of the Armed forces of the Soviet Union Sergei Varentsov, who turned 60 years old. Penkovsky’s wife, Vera Vladimirovna, is sitting in a large room at the table, there are many generals and officers there.
We see Yekaterina, Varentsov’s wife. She is smiling at the guests and accepting their expensive gifts. Penkovsky gives gifts to Marshal Varentsov. One of them is a golden lighter that looks like a rocket, there’s also a silver cigarette case and a bottle of French cognac. The guests are at the table that is heaped with food. Marshal Varentsov raises a glass of vodka and makes a toast in honor of Penkovsky, “Oleg is like a son to me.” The guests clap their hands loudly. Varentsov takes Penkovsky to his office, they sit in large armchairs.

Vorontsov gives Penkovsky top-secret information that preparations are underway for sending four submarines to the US coast, they should deliver a torpedo nuclear strike.

VARENTSOV
(suddenly frowning)
Do you think that there will be a war?
(pours brandy from a bottle into a glass, drinks greedily)
Although KHRUSHCHEV may launch a nuclear war, he wants to send four submarines to the shores of the United States with nuclear torpedoes ... He wants to deliver a torpedo nuclear strike on the United States ...

He is a viper, not a human being! Without any brakes, without any principles ...

PENKOVSKY
(his face abruptly accepts a snarl expression)
Some lunatic - he was at the war, but he looks like a gangster. All of his members of the Communist Party politburo are just usual gangsters, as they are shown on TV ... So, it’s no wonder that they are sending submarines with nuclear torpedoes - nothing is the way it's supposed to be, they are all nervous, they say some weird things, they are all have no principles ... Well, and it will end in that they will start a nuclear war for nothing, absolutely by Khrushchev’s stupidity ...

VARENTSOV
(thoughtfully)
Look - we are drinking brandy here, and someone very soon will go on a long march to the shores of the United States ... I would not want a nuclear war with the United States ...
(big pause)
I love you like a son, you buried my daughter.


-3-

The Kremlin, Moscow, the head of the Soviet Union - Nikita Khrushchev is in his office.

He’s carefully listening to the report of the head of the GRU, Ivan Serov. Serov tells him about placing 15 US missiles in Turkey, which can stage a nuclear strike in Moscow.

Khrushchev is furious, he throws a glass of water at Frol Kozlov. Khrushchev orders the Soviet Minister of Defense Rodion Malinovsky to relocate the Soviet missiles to Cuba. Khrushchev orders Vladimir Semichastny, the chairman of the KGB, a top-secret operation to misinform the CIA.

-4-

Moscow, Lubyanka, KGB, Semichastny is in a large and bright office, he’s reading the morning newspapers and TASS messages. Then he goes through the intelligence: reports of the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Health, counterintelligence.

A KGB officer on duty arrives. He has top-secret letters. Semichastny calls the chief of intelligence Aleksandr Sakharov and the chief of counterintelligence Oleg Gribanov and orders them to come to his office. They go to see Semichastny. Semichastny cannot stay at his table even for a minute, he’s nervously smoking and pacing, like a tiger in his cage. They are all at a round table, and Semichastny allows Gribanov and Sakharov to smoke.

He orders Gribanov to come up with a smart plan that can help deceive the CIA. “Often, it may be important for the safety and success of our own operations that we have an effective deception plan,” says Semichastny. The CIA is like a huge dragon, a Mechen, guarding the United States from cruel enemies. Semichastny says to Gribanov, “You have to deceive Mechen to deliver the Soviet strategic missiles to Cuba.”

-5-

It's raining in Moscow; Gribanov goes to the cottage of the KGB in a company car. He asks the driver to slow down. The car stops on Gorky Street. Galina Tilovskaya, a model of the Moscow Fashion House, with blond hair, gets into the car. In the spacious cottage hall there is a table. The light from the electric lamp hanging high on the ceiling, is falling brightly on it. Bottles of red wine and glasses are also on the table.

Gribanov pours wine into the glasses. He turns on the record player, and they begin to dance to the music, coming from the speakers of the old player. With her head resting on Gribanov’s shoulder, Tilovskaya recites an excerpt from Goethe’s Prometheus.

Gribanov asks Tilovskaya to tell him the ancient Greek myth about the clash of the titans. Tilovskaya tells the myth of the god Kronos and his son Zeus, whom Kronos wants to kill. To make his plan work, Kronos frees the monstrous giant Typhon. Deceived, Zeus, along with the other gods, fights this terrible monster, leaving Mount Olympus unprotected and soon to be attacked by Kronos. Gribanov carefully looks at Tilovskaya. They go to the bedroom.

A few hours later, while Tilovskaya is sleeping, Gribanov sits down at the table and draws two circles on a piece of paper. One circle represents Kronos, the other represents Zeus, and suddenly he comes up with a plan to misinform the CIA and shift the responsibility for world events to the United States. He pours some wine into a glass and says in his thoughts. “Where the devil cannot reach, he will send a woman.”

-6-

On a rainy night at Marshal Varentsov’s cottage, Penkovsky, his friends, the marshal’s daughter, Soviet fashion models Zbarskaya, Tilovskaya are sitting at the table, enjoying champagne and cognac. Penkovsky removes the shoe from Zbarskaya’s foot and pours champagne into it. He gives a toast and drinks the champagne from the shoe. “P.S. I Love You” by The Beatles is playing.

Penkovsky dances with Zbarskaya and takes her to a separate room. Unbeknownst to everyone, Penkovsky passes to Zbarskaya a bottle of CHANEL perfume, containing an encrypted message for the CIA about sending Soviet submarines to the US coast.

-7-

Text: 09/30/1962, submarine of the naval base of the Soviet Union, Olenya Guba Bay, Kola Bay of the Barents Sea.

At night, nuclear torpedoes are being loaded onto four submarines at the pier. The officers of the Ministry of Defense, Russian Navy and GRU are standing on the pier. Gribanov gives each sub captain a package, on which it is written in big red letters, “Top Secret, open the envelopes after leaving the territorial waters of the USSR.” The captains and submarine crews are not aware of their mission. Early in the morning, the submarines go out to the sea. Gribanov looks at his watch: it’s 4 in the morning.

-8-

The US Navy ships are hunting the Russian submarines in the Sargasso Sea. The submarines are cornered.

Diesel engines do not work on a B-130 submarine. We see the crew of the submarine, they are suffocating because there isn’t enough air. The radio officer is constantly sending radio messages to Moscow. The soundman informs the captain that the sonar has located destroyers of the US Navy that are above them.

-9-

Soviet fashion models showcase new women’s clothing in Paris. There is a large runway and many American and French journalists and photographers are present.
Zbarskaya walks back and forth along the runway, her hands on her hips, swaying and looking at herself in all the mirrors. She is wearing a short satin red dress with straight deep folds on the skirt, which rhythmically oscillate left and right from the movement of her hips. One American journalist says loudly, “Khrushchev is well aware that beautiful models and talented fashion designers can create a new image of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the Western media.”

On the table in a bar in Paris, we see a small flask of CHANEL perfume, which is a secret sign. A CIA agent sits at the table, smoking a cigarette and looking at the door. Zbarskaya enters the bar, goes to the table with the CHANEL bottle. She sits down at the table, and the agent gives Zbarskaya a bundle of money. Then they exchange the perfume boxes. No one sees that happen.

The CIA agent drives a car to the US Embassy in France and hands the perfume box to a CIA resident. He opens the box, reads Penkovsky’s encrypted message about sending submarines with nuclear torpedoes to the shores of the United States. Penkovsky’s secret message is transmitted by radio to the CIA headquarters in Langley.

The CIA radio operator receives the encrypted report from Paris and types the text on a typewriter. He sends the decrypted message to the CIA SAD SR-9. We see the CIA officer from SR-9, who is with Tennent H. Bagley, head of the CIA counterintelligence department. Bagley reports about this message from the Soviet Union.

-10-

Zbarskaya’s apartment in Moscow. In the bedroom, we see a bed. Penkovsky jumps in with Zbarskaya, stretches out on the bed, raises his hands and kisses her with passion.

They do not have feelings for each other, they are just friends with benefits. For Penkovsky, sex is part of her world of fulfillment. A few minutes later, we see Penkovsky lying in bed, and Zbarskaya standing at the window and smoking.

Penkovsky is holding the French magazine “Paris Match.” You can see the headline on the first page “Beautiful Kremlin weapons” and a photograph of Zbarskaya.
Penkovsky quotes the article from the magazine, “Her father-in-law froze Lenin, and she made Paris and the whole West melt.” Zbarskaya asks Penkovsky to tell her about his military life during World War II. Penkovsky talks about the fear of war: everyone is afraid, but some people break, and others brace themselves. He says that happy politicians such as Khrushchev have become sharper, and Soviet generals, who were formidable and ruthless officers during the war, have become bureaucrats who now live generously on their salaries.

Penkovsky, despite the fact that he continues his monologue, is certain that the modern Soviet army is comprised of hundreds of violinists, and the time has come for great disappointments and reassessment for the Soviet Union.

Penkovsky recites St. Augustine, “Unlike bandit groups, the state is based on justice. But, if justice is obsessed with rudeness because of this, then the state is simply a great opportunity, and it is a shame to live in this state.”

-11-

The commercial sea port of Leningrad, the cargo and passenger ship “MARIA ULYANOVA” is loading the Soviet ballistic missiles, officers, their children and wives.

The port has armed security, trucks with military equipment are driving in. Tanks and aircrafts are being loaded into the holds of the cargo ships. The landing in the hold of the ship takes place secretly in complete darkness. A railway freight train with personnel has approached the pier. Soldiers and officers do not go outside, they go from car to car in the direction of the engine. From the main car, the personnel goes straight to the ship’s ramp. The ships of the hold are filled with people, who are destined to remain in this hot steel hull for almost a month.

Gribanov and Aleksandr Tikhonov, rear admiral of the KGB, are watching the loading at the seaport. Soldiers, sergeants and officers receive two sets of clothes in the hold of the ship: civilian for camouflage and military, the so-called “southern” version. Coats, boots and hats are also given out for disguise. Before the ships set sail, Gribanov gives each captain three packages with secret instructions as to how to act in different situations. The first package instructs, “Open after leaving the territorial waters of the USSR.” There are no inscriptions on the other two. Package No. 1 says that package No. 2 should be opened after passing through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. Package No. 2 says package No. 3 should be opened after passing Gibraltar. And only the last third package has the final orders, “Set for Cuba.”

-12-

Text: one year ago. June 4, 1961, Vienna, Austria.

John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev are sitting at a table in the Grand Gallery of the Sch;nbrunn Palace.

Khrushchev threatens to make a peace treaty with Germany, which will mean the end of the occupation regime and the proclamation of all of Berlin as the territory of this state. Khrushchev says the Soviet Union does not want war, but if the US imposes it, it will happen.

Kennedy does not want to get involved in the fight for West Berlin. However, he says the United States will fight if the Soviet Union unilaterally changes the situation.

Kennedy says, “Yes, it looks like this year we’ll have a cold winter.”

KENNEDY
(annoyed)
Stubborn Bolshevik! He treated me like a boy ... can't think of anything except Berlin.

Khrushchev go slowly towards the Soviet delegation. Call Semichastny.

KHRUSHCHEV
(wipes a sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief)
The president of the United States is quite young, he is young enough to be my son!
No, this is not the gall and wicked old man Eisenhower, we will probably be able to turn our cold war in the direction of warming with Kennedy! But for the start this green youth it would be worth scaring by the Russian force!

KHRUSHCHEV
(smiles)
BUT! Let's put our Russian hedgehog to American pants ... Well, did your vaunted KGB generals come up with a cunning plan?

SEMICHASTNY
Yes, sir ... it can’t be more cunning!

KHRUSHCHEV
All right! You will tell me in Moscow....


Memories, early May, 1961: KGB agents set up listening equipment in the Grand Gallery, which is the main room of the Sch;nbrunn Palace.

Gribanov goes to the Small Gallery, looks at the Neptune fountain. Gribanov and the KGB agents go up to the Glorietta Pavilion.

It offers a magnificent view of the palace and the whole of Vienna. He carefully looks at the column building and orders to place snipers in the central part in the form of a triumphal arch with an imperial eagle.

-13-

On board the Russian submarine, the commander orders to send a radio message to Moscow stating that he is forced to surface due to engine malfunction and lack of air. The submarine floats to the surface and stops. It is surrounded by four warships of the US Navy. The captains of the warships receive a high-priority radio message from the chief commander of the US Navy, “Strike the Russians, but not to kill.”

Suddenly, the Russian submarine crew hears “Love Me Do” by the Beatles, which is coming from the speakers of the warship.

The American sailors, huddled up to one another with ropes, in tropical underpants and hats, look at the half-naked Russian sailors, who are breathing the fresh air.
The Americans push back the Russian submarines to the 60th meridian, which Kennedy defined as the “line of exile” for the Soviet submarines.

-14-

Text: September 4, 1962, US Congress.

President Kennedy assures the members of Congress that there are no Soviet missiles in Cuba.

The President is waiting for the CIA Director and the US Secretary of Defense in the Oval Office of the White House. The US Secretary of Defense reports that the Russian submarines have been pushed away from the US coast.

Kennedy orders the CIA director to stop the U-2 reconnaissance flights over Cuba.

-15-

Penkovsky, Serov and his wife and daughter are in the waiting room of the Moscow airport.
Serov asks Penkovsky to show London to his wife and daughter.
The KGB agent and Gribanov are having coffee in a cafe at the Moscow airport. The speaker of the airport announces that the plane for London is boarding. Penkovsky, Serov’s wife and his daughter board the plane. Gribanov is the last to board the plane. Gribanov is watching Penkovsky in the plane.
It is raining at night in London, Penkovsky enters a bar and quietly passes to the bartender, a CIA agent, a film with secret documents about the deployment of missiles in the Soviet Union. Sitting at the far table, Gribanov is watching Penkovsky.

Opposite Gribanov, indirectly, is a KGB agent in a black brim hat; dirty beard, long hair, eyeglass.

He looks back to the left, to the right, yawns lazily, puts his hat on and carefully folds the newspaper he was reading in his lap.
This is a signal for Gribanov.

Penkovsky leaves the bar, followed by the KGB agent onto the night streets. Gribanov gets in a cab and goes to the embassy of the Soviet Union in England.

He enters the building and goes up the wide stairs to the office of the KGB. He informs the KGB intelligence officer Colonel Nikolai Bagrichev that Penkovsky works for the British and American intelligence.

-16-

Text: Edward, California, US Air Force Base, 10/14/1962.

Major Richard Heyser receives an order from the CIA director, John Alexander McCone, about aerial reconnaissance in Cuba.

U-2 reconnaissance aircraft flies in the direction of Cuba.

After completing Heyser’s mission, the engineers remove the tape from the reconnaissance equipment of the aircraft and hand it to the CIA agents.
Their specialists decode the photographs in a special room at the CIA headquarters.
The analysts analyze the photographs and find on them the starting positions of the Soviet Р-12 rockets, take-off strips with airplanes. The head of the CIA’s analytical department runs down the CIA corridors with the photographs of the missiles intended for the CIA director John Alexander McCone.

The CIA Director calls the Assistant President in Washington, DC and asks the US President to see him. John A. McCone and the CIA agents get in a car and drive to Washington. In the White House, he informs the US President John F. Kennedy about the results of their aerial photoreconnaissance.

John A. McCone says that the Russians tricked the United States and placed their missiles in Cuba while the US Navy was hunting the Russian submarines. The CIA director says there is a widespread public opinion that the USSR has been constantly involved in deceitful practices, in fact, it’s been going on for so long that we never believe everything that they say, and that the intelligence analyst and the politician constantly expect and let the Soviet hypocrisy in everything. Kennedy is very upset and orders the US Secretary of Defense to put the US armed forces on high alert.

On October 22, 1962, John F. Kennedy announces on the radio the enforcement of quarantine and, basically, a naval blockade of Cuba. The US president says that no one expects the Soviet budget to show actual expenses on their defense, or that the USSR will tell us the true purpose of its forces in East Germany. They tried to deceive by the strength of their strategic forces when they knew that we had no means of verifying it. No one can deny that the plan was perfectly executed until the moment when we finally discovered the rockets. Even by Soviet standards, it was a masterpiece of security, in which there was not a single specific leak in relation to the nature of the Soviet plans and decisions or cargo on the ships under deck.

The Soviet deception operation was significantly more complex and more efficient than the one for East Germany. It was also much more important for the USSR that this deception be successful; indeed, the success of the operation in Cuba depended largely on leading the US astray as to the Soviet intentions.

-17-

The doorbell in Penkovsky’s apartment in Moscow. He opens the door. KGB officers break into the apartment, followed by Gribanov. Penkovsky is taken into custody and brought to the KGB office in Lubyanka. In the KGB headquarters where Penkovsky now is, Semichastny yells at Penkovsky and compares him to a ferret, who will eat all the chickens when he gets into the chicken coop. Penkovsky admits that he is a spy and is ready to cooperate with the KGB.

Penkovsky asks Semichastny to send him to the United States, where he will be working for the KGB and sending information about the CIA. Penkovsky says, “Kill my family and my daughters if I give you misinformation.” Gribanov responds to Penkovsky, “A villain is worse than any kind of crocodile.”

Gribanov is watching Penkovsky closely as he speaks. Gribanov replies, “The higher one flies, the deeper his roots grow into the earth, in darkness - towards evil.”

-18-

On October 27, Major Rudolf Anderson takes off on a U-2A reconnaissance aircraft from the McCoy Air Force Base in Orlando, Florida.

A Soviet anti-aircraft missile shoots down the American U-2A over Cuba. Advisers to the President of the United States suggest that he immediately organize an air strike at the Russian missile positions or carry out a direct invasion in Cuba.

The CIA director says, “Of course, it is undoubtedly much easier for the dictator or the leadership of a closed society to plan and implement a deception program than it is for us.” Kennedy says, “The crisis threatens to turn into a world nuclear war.”

The President of the USA informs Khrushchev over the phone that he gives guarantees not to invade Cuba if Khrushchev withdraws the R-12 ballistic missiles and Il-28 bombers from the island. Khrushchev asks Kennedy to destroy the American missile base in Turkey.

-19-

During a meeting of the USSR Government in the Kremlin, Khrushchev gives orders to Malinovsky, the Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union, to dismantle the missile targets in Cuba and prepare the missile division for transportation to the Soviet Union. Gribanov and Tikhonov in Havana are watching the loading of rockets and aircrafts on the ships of the civil fleet of the Soviet Union. Tugboats slowly turn the ships to steer the course down the canal. Gribanov travels by car to Lourdes, the southern suburbs of the Cuban capital Havana.

He oversees the construction of the Russian electronic intelligence center.

We meet Albert Aganesov, the head of the Russian Electronic Intelligence Center. He tells Gribanov about the possibility of intercepting information from the U.S. communications satellites, U.S. Air Force aircrafts and U.S. Navy ships. Aganesov assures Gribanov that his equipment can control 75% of the US information.

Gribanov quietly tells Aganesov, “The party that owns the information will win in the future war. We do not need peace with the USA, we need a victory! We must be proud that the CIA is our enemy, then the success of the CIA will be ours too.”

-20-

The meeting of the commission for the analysis of the military campaign of the submarines to the US coast is being held in the small and dark hall of the USSR Ministry of Defense.

There is an armed guard at the door of the hall. Frol Kozlov, a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Admiral Sergey Gorshkov, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral Vladimir Kasatonov, Commander of the Northern Fleet and Marshal Andrei Grechko, First Deputy Minister of Defense, are sitting at a large table. On the other side of the table are the captains of the submarines.

Grechko yells at the captains of the submarines, “We did not expect that you were alive!” He asks each submarine commander the question, “Why didn’t you shoot the American ships with nuclear torpedoes?” All the captains answer, “We didn’t have the orders to do so.”

Kozlov asks the question, “Why did the submarines surface before the American ships?”

He and Grechko hear the truth from the captains, “Diesel-electric submarines, not nuclear, were sent on a military campaign to the shores of the United States.” Frolov and Malinovsky do not report to Khrushchev in the Kremlin, which submarines were sent to Cuba.

Admiral Vladimir Kasatonov is sitting at the table in the headquarters of the Navy of the USSR, writing in capital letters a resolution on the order, “do not punish the captains of the submarines.”

-21-

Tilovskaya and Gribanov drive a car to the KGB cottage, the sun is shining brightly.

They are sitting in the backseat of the car and suddenly they hear on the radio an important message that the United States dismantled the rockets in Turkey.

Tilovskaya asks the driver to go faster. The car picks up speed. Through the window, they see children playing in the sandbox.
 
Tilovskaya says to Gribanov, “These children are happy and should thank you for it was you, who stopped the nuclear war by deceiving the CIA. There is only one true law on earth, and maybe, who knows, in the whole universe: everything in the world must end sooner or later, and no one and nothing will escape this.”

In short, we are most concerned about the strategic intentions of our enemies and potential foes, what they plan to do in general, and not primarily when they can do it or what forces they can accomplish - although we will also be concerned about this as a secondary priority .

Since a strategic warning concerns primarily all strategic intent, it will also relate primarily to strategic deception.

-22-

Text: March 1, 2018. Moscow, Central Exhibition Hall “Manege.” Message from the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly.
Members of the Federation Council, deputies of the State Duma and members of the Russian Government are present. On the big screen, we see a nuclear unmanned underwater apparatus, which is moving at high speed to the shores of the United States.

The final text reads:

Today, Russia and the United States returned to the state of the Cold War. In the process of delivering Soviet missiles to Cuba, the Soviet operation to trick the CIA was extremely difficult. It was very important for the KGB that this deception be successful. The success of the KGB operation in Cuba was to mislead the United States about Soviet intentions.