The Company_ A Novel Of The CIA Part 60

The judge removed his red cap and replaced it with a black one. "Sergei Semyonovich Kukushkin," he intoned, "degenerates and renegades like you evoke a sentiment of indignation and loathing in all Soviet people. One can take comfort from the fact that you are a pa.s.sing phenomenon in our society. But your example shows clearly what danger lurks in the vestiges of the past, and what they might develop into if we do not act with ruthless determination to uproot them. I p.r.o.nounce you guilty of all the charges brought against you and sentence you to be shot. Court adjourned."

The spectators on the benches applauded the verdict vigorously. "So finish all traitors to the Motherland," a man called from a back row. Kukushkin's expressionless gaze drifted over the room and came to rest for a fleeting moment on Manny. The barest trace of an ironic smile disfigured his lips. One of his guards tapped him on the arm. Kukushkin turned and held out his wrists and handcuffs were snapped on. Walking in short steps because of the ankle bracelets, he shuffled from the prisoner's box and disappeared through the door.

Sometime in the pre-dawn stillness, Manny was startled out of an agitated sleep by the sound of a metal door clanging closed in the corridor, followed by footsteps outside his cell. The overhead light came on. A key turned in the lock and Kukushkin appeared at the door. Manny sat up on the army cot and pulled the blanket up to his chin. Still wearing ankle bracelets, Kukushkin walked slowly across the cell and sat down at the foot of the cot. "h.e.l.lo to you, Manny," he said, his voice reduced to a rasp.

Manny knew that the conversation would be recorded, perhaps even filmed. He chose his words carefully. "I gather things didn't go well for you. I want you to know..." His voice trailed off.

Kukushkins heavy shoulders sagged. "I am to be executed at dawn," he announced.

The news struck Manny with the force of a fist. "I wish... if only I could do something-"

"You can."

"What?"

"For me it's over. For Elena, for my daughter-"

Manny could see the torment in Sergei's eyes.

"In Soviet Russia, the immediate relations of enemies of the people are made to suffer. I have denied it, of course, but they a.s.sume that my wife, even my daughter, were aware of my... activities. They will be sent to a Gulag camp for fifteen years. With her heart condition Elena will not survive fifteen days. And my daughter will not survive the loss of her mother."

"I don't see-"

"Look, Manny, I'll come to the point. They have sent me to offer you a deal. It is important to them, vis-a-vis international opinion, that you admit publicly to being a CIA officer."

"But I'm not-"

Kukushkin raised the palm of his hand. "In return for your cooperation they have promised that Elena and my child will not be punished. So, like it or not, their fate is in your hands." Kukushkin turned away and chewed on his lip. When he had regained his composure he said, "You owe it to me, Manny. And I ask you to pay this debt. I beg you. I will go to my death with a firmer step, with a lighter conscience, if you do this thing for me."

Manny had the crazed feeling that he could feel the earth picking up speed in its rotation around its axis. Thoughts ripped through the lobes of his skull. He looked at the wreck of a man hunched at the foot of the bunk bed. Then he nodded miserably. "Okay," he whispered. "I'll do what has to be done."

Kukushkin nodded back and brought the palm of his hand to his chest. "I thank you from my heart," he said.

Manny remained awake for the rest of the night, his eyes riveted on the slit of a window high in the wall, his ears straining for the slightest groan or grate from the ma.s.sive tomb of Lubyanka. He thought of Leo Kritzky, isolated in Angleton's private dungeon; as far as Manny was concerned Leo could rot in prison for the rest of his natural life. The Company owed Kukushkin that much. When dawn broke into his own cell he heard death stirring in the courtyard below. A cart on steel-rimmed wheels was rolled into position. A short while later a door opened and a squad of men could be heard marching in lockstep across the cobblestones. A command echoed off the stone walls. The men halted and slammed their boots and the b.u.t.ts of rifles onto the ground. Another door was thrown open and three men walked slowly from the far end of the courtyard toward the squad waiting at parade rest. Moments later two of them walked away. More orders were barked, one on the heels of the other. In his cell, Manny folded his knees up to his chin and caught his breath. Below the window, rifle bolts were thrown. A voice that Manny only recognized when he reproduced it in his brain was heard to yell, "You owe it to me, Manny." A volley of rifle shots rang out. On the roof of the prison wave after wave of pigeons beat into the ash-streaked sky. As the men marched off in lockstep, the whiplash of a single pistol shot reverberated through Manny's cell. The steel-rimmed wheels of the cart rolled back across the courtyard. A jet of water from a high-powered hose scoured the cobblestones. And then a silence as suffocating as any Manny had heard in his life filled his grieving skull.

The inquisitor asked if the prisoner would like to read the confession in English before he signed both the Russian and English versions. "Why not? Manny said. He held the sheet of single-s.p.a.ced typewriting up to the light.

I, the undersigned, Immanuel Ebbitt, hereby acknowledge the following particulars to be true and factual: One: that I am a full-time employee of the American Central Intelligence Agency on active duty. Two: that I was the controlling officer of the Soviet traitor Sergei Semyonovich Kukushkin, who defected to the American side while serving as a political attache in Washington. Three: that I was sent under the cover of a tourist to contact the traitor Kukushkin after he was recalled to Moscow in order to convince him to continue spying for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Manny skimmed the rest of the paper-it followed exactly the Russian version. He'd agreed to acknowledge his connection to Kukushkin but drawn the line when it came to revealing operational information or the ident.i.ties of Company officers and agents; the KGB, realizing that half a loaf was better than nothing, had settled for that. Manny reached for the fountain pen that the inquisitor had set on the desk and scrawled his name across the bottom of both versions. "Now what?" he asked.

"Now we will prepare for your public trial."

"Can I ask for a favor?"

"You can ask."

"I'd like a different lawyer."

"Comrade Pravdin is one of the most competent defense attorneys in Moscow-"

"I'm not challenging his competence," Manny said. "It's his bad breath that I can't stand."

8.

WASHINGTON, DC, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1974.

ANGLETON LOOMED LIKE AN APPARITION BEHIND THE CIGARETTE smoke. "Pravda published a photograph of the confession alongside the story about the execution of 'the traitor Kukushkin,"' he noted. "My people checked the signature-they're convinced it's Manny's handwriting."

"He must have been drugged," Ebby said. "There's no other way to explain it."

Jack put his hand on Ebby's shoulder. "There are other possibilities," he said quietly. "He may have been... forced. I mean physically. Or he could have been trading the confession for..."

Jack couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence.

Angleton finished it for him. "For his life. That's what you wanted to say, isn't it, Jack?"

"Thank you for your bluntness," Ebby said coldly.

Angleton jammed another cigarette between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, tossed it into the burn bag. "As you pointed out to me, Elliott, your son's a consenting adult-he went into Russia with his eyes open."

"Yes, he did," Ebby conceded. "Now the problem is to get him out- with his eyes open."

When the American named Immanuel Bridges failed to turn up for supper at the Metropole the evening of the visit to GUM, the Trailblazer representative leading the tour had phoned the US emba.s.sy. The emba.s.sy people weren't unduly alarmed; from time to time a visiting fireman had gone on with one of the hookers who frequented the underpa.s.ses near the Kremlin, only to turn up a day or two later with a roaring hangover and a missing wallet. Still, the emba.s.sy had covered the appropriate bases, checking with the city militia and the hospitals. When there was still no trace of the Trailblazer tourist the next morning, an undersecretary had formally notified the Soviet Ministry of the Interior and the Department of State in Washington. The emba.s.sy's cable to Foggy Bottom was routinely routed ("for information only") to the CIA. At which point the alarm bells had gone off at Langley. The Kukushkin task force had gathered in Ebby's office. For the moment all they had were hypothetical questions. Had Manny succeeded in meeting with ae/PINNACLE at either the primary or secondary rendezvous? Had the KGB become suspicious of Manny and trailed him despite his tradecraft precautions? Or had they somehow figured out that Kukushkin was spying for the Americans? Had the father-in-law's illness and demise been staged to get his wife and daughter, and then Kukushkin, to return to Moscow before the CIA could bring the family to safety? If Kukushkin had in fact been arrested, would he break under questioning? Would he implicate Manny?

Two days after Manny's disappearance, the Soviet Interior Minister had informed the emba.s.sy that an American national by the name of Bridges, Immanuel, had been caught in the act of meeting clandestinely with a Soviet diplomat and had been taken into custody. A vice-counsel, Elizabeth Crainworth (actually a CIA officer a.s.signed to the Company's Moscow Station under diplomatic cover) had been dispatched to Lubyanka prison to interview the American in question. Unaware (for reasons of security, Moscow Station had been left out of the loop) that she was dealing with a CIA agent on a onetime mission in Moscow, she'd reported back that Bridges had denied the Soviet charges and had maintained he was an ordinary tourist.

The Pravda account of Kukushkin's execution and Manny's confession had been picked up by the a.s.sociated Press. The switchboard at the Company's public relations office lit up as newspapers across America tried to pry a statement out of the CIA; those that managed to get through to one of Millie Owen-Brack's public relations flacks came away with the usual "The Central Intelligence Agency does not comment on stories of this nature." Director Colby was spirited into the White House through a side entrance to explain to an irate President Ford (who had just stirred up a storm by issuing a full pardon to Richard Nixon for all federal crimes "he committed or may have committed" while in office) why the Company had sent an officer into the Soviet Union without diplomatic cover. Inside Langley, the corridors were abuzz with rumors of what looked like an intelligence fiasco. As word of Kukushkin's execution and Manny's confession spread, the veteran agents and officers on the seventh floor closed ranks; many dropped by Ebby's shop to offer moral support. Jack and Ebby huddled with some of the more experienced field hands to see if they couldn't come up with a game plan. It was at one of these sessions that a possible solution surfaced. The brainstorming had reached a dead end when Jack suddenly jumped to his feet. "d.a.m.nation," he exclaimed, "it's been staring us in the face. The way to spring Manny is to exchange him for someone the KGB wants."

"Exchange Manny for whom?" Bill Colby inquired when the full task force met to consider the idea.

Ebby glanced at Jack, then looked uncertainly at Bill Colby "Spit it out, Elliott," the Director ordered.

"If I'm reading the tea leaves correctly," Ebby finally said, "Kukushkin's trial and execution... what I'm driving at is there appears to be no room left for doubt that ae/PINNACLE was a genuine defector, which means that his serials were true serials."

Jack said, "It's not easy for me to say this but Jim got it right-Leo Kritzky is SASHA."

Angleton was following the conversation with heavy-lidded eyes. "Hang on," he said. "I can see where this is headed. The answer is: Over my dead body."

Ebby turned on Angleton. "Let me ask you something, Jim-have you broken Leo? Has he admitted to being a Soviet agent?"

"Not yet."

"Not yet," Jack repeated, looking at Colby. "Jim's had Leo on ice for more than three months, Director. I went to see him a while back and I can tell you he's not in a luxury hotel. He's drinking water out of a toilet bowl. If he hasn't cracked by now chances are he's not going to. He'll rot to death in Jim's private dungeon proclaiming his innocence."

"I can see you've never been fly fishing," Angleton said lazily. "Doesn't surprise me-you don't have the patience. Count on it, Kritzky will break. In the end they all do. When he does I'll tap into a counterintelligence gold seam-what he gave away during all these years, the ident.i.ty of the controlling officer known as Starik, details of the operation known as KHOLSTOMER-"

"What are you going to do if he doesn't break?" Jack asked Angleton.

Ebby said, "You don't have many alternatives, Jim. You can bring him to trial-but without a confession and a guilty plea, this would involve calling witnesses and exposing Company secrets. Or you could keep him in prison for the rest of his life, something that would eventually present moral and legal problems. Imagine the stink if someone in Congress or the press broke the story: 'CIA jails suspected Soviet mole for life without giving him his day in court.' Talk about scandals, it would make Watergate look like a parking infraction." Ebby turned to Colby. "The KGB, on the other hand, might jump at the chance to trade Manny for Kritzky-"

Colby slowly shook his head. "I'm just thinking out loud," he said, "but if we handed Kritzky over to the Soviets, what would prevent them from trotting him out in front of a pack of Western journalists for a propaganda triumph. He could still deny he worked for the Russians, he could tell them how he was illegally incarcerated in a CIA prison for three months under humiliating conditions. He would come across angry and bitter, which would explain why he'd decided to reveal the good secrets I've managed to keep out of the hands of Congress-the ident.i.ty of our agents and descriptions of our ongoing operations, not to mention the operations he's been party to for the past twenty-three years-Iran, Guatemala, Cuba for starters." The Director saw the pain on Ebby's face. "Let me be clear-in principle I'm not against the idea of trading one of theirs for one of ours. But trading Kritzky is a nonstarter."

Ebby got up and walked over to stare out a window. Colby started to collect his papers. Jack focused on Angleton across the table. "There's more than one way to skin a cat," he muttered.

"You have another idea?" Colby inquired.

"As a matter of fact, yeah. I know someone else we could trade for Manny."

A very thin, nattily dressed man in his late forties ducked into the men's room off the lobby of the Hay-Adams Hotel on l6th Street. He urinated in one of the stalls, then rinsed his hands and dried them on a paper towel, which he threw into the bin. He removed his thick eyegla.s.ses, cleaned them with a handkerchief and carefully hooked them back over his ears. Studying himself in the mirror, he adjusted his bow tie, then tried to pick food particles from between his teeth with a fingernail. The Puerto Rican janitor finished washing the floor and, gathering his mop and pail, departed, leaving the man alone in the lavatory. Opening the middle cubicle, he climbed onto the toilet seat, reached into the cistern and removed the package sheathed in a condom. On the way to the door, he discarded the condom in the bin filled with used paper towels and slipped the package into the pocket of his suit jacket. Stepping out into the lobby, he discovered half a dozen men in dark three-piece suits waiting for him. Off to one side a cameraman filmed the proceeding. One of the men stepped forward and, flipping open a small wallet containing a laminated card and a silver badge, identified himself as agent Sibley of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Another agent expertly snapped handcuffs on the man's wrists. Behind them, in the lobby, guests and employees of the Hay-Adams stopped what they were doing to watch.

"Raymond Shelton, we are arresting you for pa.s.sing cla.s.sified information to a foreign intelligence service with intent to harm the United Statrd," agent Sibley announced.

Shelton, clearly terrified, sputtered, "This has to be a case of mistaken ident.i.ty-"

This seemed to amuse the FBI agent. "You are the Raymond W. Shelton employed by the National Security Agency?"

"Yes, I am. But I don't understand-"

"You will in a moment."

With the camera zooming in, agent Sibley reached into Shelton's pocket and took out the package he had recovered from the cistern. He opened it on camera and spilled the contents onto a table. There was a wad of five-hundred-dollar bills, four tiny microfilm canisters and a blank piece of paper which the agent handled gingerly so as not to eradicate the secret writing believed to be on it. There were also two matchbooks with one-time code grids hand-drawn under the matches. Another agent pulled an index card from his breast pocket and began to read from it. "I advise you that you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in subsequent legal proceedings. You have the right to legal counsel. If you can't afford legal counsel, one will be appointed by a court of law..."

"Oh, dear, Ardyn, what is going on?" a gray-haired woman whispered to the concierge standing behind the reception desk.

"Well, you're not going to believe this, Mrs. Williams, but I think the FBI's just captured a criminal."

"In the Hay-Adams! My goodness, how thrilling," the woman said. "Will I have something to tell my children when I get back to Memphis!"

When word of Manny's disappearance reached Langley, two of his closest friends in the Soviet Division stopped by Nellie's law office to break the news to her: Manny had gone into Moscow as a tourist and failed to show up for supper at the Hotel Metropole the previous evening. So far they had no idea what had happened to him. The emba.s.sy people were on the case, checking with the police and hospitals to see if he had been involved in an accident. Of course the Company would let Nellie know the instant there was any news.

Ebby phoned her soon after. She would have to understand that he couldn't tell her much over the phone. All they knew for sure was that Manny hadn't returned to the hotel. When Ebby told her they were still hoping the disappearance would have an innocent explanation, Nellie exploded: "You mean he might have been mugged and is lying unconscious in some alleyway, as opposed to arrested?" Then she got a grip on her emotions. She was terribly sorry; she understood this must be as hard for Ebby as it was for her. "It's hard on all of us," Ebby agreed, and she could tell from his voice that he was worried sick. Before he hung up he said, "Look, when you get off work, why don't you move back in with us until this blows over."

Ebby never made it home from Langley that night. Elizabet and Nellie sat up until after two, knocking down frozen daiquiris. The only light came from a late-night film, Five Easy Pieces, flickering on the television screen with the sound switched off. To break the long silences, Nellie got her mother onto the subject of Hungary. Elizabet, under the spell of the daiquiris, let down her guard and began to talk about Nellie s father, the poet Arpad Zeik. "I'm told that young people still recite his poems in the university," she said.

"How long were you together?" Nellie wanted to know.

Elizabet smiled in the flickering darkness. "We were never together, Arpad and I. Our paths crossed, sometimes several times during a day, more often than not in bed. He was what you might call an ardent despot, tyrannical in the pursuit of poetry and liberty for the ma.s.ses. Individual freedom-my freedom-was not high on his agenda."

"And he was killed in the revolution."

"The revolution-the Russians-in a manner of speaking killed him. He and his poetry had helped suck the Hungarian people into a tragedy. When he realized this he did what had to be done-he shot himself."

Nellie whispered, "You told me he'd died but you never said he'd killed himself." She gulped down what was left in the gla.s.s, then chewed on some crushed ice. "Did you love him?" she asked.

Elizabet thought about that. "I don't remember," she said.

This annoyed Nellie. "How can you say that? How can you say you don't remember if you loved my father?"

"It's an honest answer. I must have thought I loved him-why else would I have been with him? But when I fell in love with Elliott it eradicated the several loves that went before."

"If something happens to Manny..." Nellie brought a fist up to her solar plexus. When the pain in her chest subsided she finished the sentence. "If something happens I will never forget how much I love him. Nothing... no one... no amount of time will eradicate the memory."

Elizabet held out her arms and Nellie came into them. Soundless sobs racked the girl's body and a torrent of tears spilled from her eyes.

The news that Manny had been arrested came as a relief to both women-at least it meant that he wasn't dying in an alleyway. Ebby showed up late one afternoon but he only stayed the time it took to shower and shave and change into fresh clothing, at which point he headed straight back to Langley to stay on top of the situation.

It was Jack who eventually phoned up with the good news. "I think it's going to work out," he told Nellie.

She covered the mouthpiece. "Jack thinks things will work out," she told her mother. Elizabet took the phone when Nellie chocked up with emotion. "Jack, are you sure?"