The Company_ A Novel Of The CIA Part 62

"Living and kicking. He works out of a Mossad safe house in a suburb of Tel Aviv. Saw him eight months ago when he was pa.s.sing through Washington-we met in Albuquerque and he picked my brain, or what was left of it." The Sorcerer took a bite out of his sandwich, then produced a ballpoint pen and scratched an address and an unlisted phone number on the inside of an East of Eden Gardens matchbook. "A word to the wise-it's not polite to go empty-handed."

"What should I bring?"

"Information. Don't forget to say shalom from the Sorcerer when you see him."

"I'll do that, Harvey."

The midday Levantine sun burned into the back of Jack's neck as he picked his way through the vegetable stalls in the Nevei Tsedek district north of Jaffa, a neighborhood of dilapidated buildings that dated back to the turn of the century when the first Jewish homesteaders settled on the dunes of what would become Tel Aviv. The sleeves of his damp shirt were rolled up to the elbows, his sports jacket hung limply from a forefinger over his right shoulder. He double-checked the address that the Sorcerer had scribbled inside the matchbook, then looked again to see if he could make out house numbers on the shops or doorways. "You don't speak English?" he asked a bearded man peddling falafel from a pushcart.

"If I don't speak English," the man shot back, "why do you ask your question in English? English I speak. Also Russian. Also Turkish, Greek and enough Rumanian to pa.s.s for someone from Transylvania in Bulgaria, which is what saved my life during the war. German, too, I know but I invite Hashem, blessed be He, to strike me dead if a word of it pa.s.ses my lips. Yiddish, Hebrew go without saying."

"I'm looking for seventeen Shabazi Street but I don't see any numbers on the houses."

"I wish I had such eyes," remarked the falafel man. "To be able to see there are no numbers! And at this distance, too." He indicated a house with his nose. "Number seventeen is the poured-concrete Bauhaus blockhouse with the second-hand bookstore on the ground floor, right there, next to the tailor shop."

"Thanks."

"Thanks to you, too, Mister. Appreciate Israel."

The stunning dark-haired young woman behind the desk raised her imperturbable eyes when Jack pushed through the door into the bookstore. "I need help," he told the young woman.

"Everybody does," she retorted. "Not many come right out and admit it."

Jack looked fleetingly at the old man who was browsing through the English language books in the back, then turned to the woman. "I was led to believe I could find Ezra Ben Ezra at this address."

"Who told you that?"

"Ezra Ben Ezra, when I called him from the United States of America. You've heard of the United States of America, I suppose."

"You must be the Sorcerer's Apprentice."

"That's me."

The woman seemed to find this amusing. "At your age you should have become a full-fledged Sorcerer already. Remaining an apprentice your whole life must be humiliating. The Rabbi is expecting you." She hit a b.u.t.ton under the desk. A segment of wall between two stands of shelves clicked open and Jack ducked through it. He climbed at long flight of narrow concrete steps that bypa.s.sed the first floor and took him directly to the top floor of the building. There he came across a crew cut young man in a dirty sweat suit strip cleaning an Uzi. The young man raised a wrist to his mourfti and muttered something into it, then listened to the tinny reply coming through the small device planted in one of his ears. Behind him, still another door clicked open and Jack found himself in a large room with poured concrete walls and long narrow slits for windows. The Rabbi, looking a decade older than his sixty-one years, hobbled across the room with the help of a cane to greet Jack.

"Our paths crossed in Berlin," the Rabbi announced.

"I'm flattered you remember me," Jack said.

Ben Ezra pointed with his cane toward a leather-and-steel sofa and, with an effort, settled onto a straight-backed steel chair facing his visitor. "To tell you the terrible truth, I am not so great at faces any more but I never forget a favor I did for someone. You were running an East German code-named SNIPER, who turned out to be a professor of theoretical physics named Loffler. Ha, I can see by the expression on your face I hit the hammer on the head. Or should that be nail? Loffler finished badly, if my memory serves, which it does intermittently. His cutout, RAINBOW, too." He shook his head in despair. "Young people today forget that Berlin was a battleground."

"There were a lot of corpses on both sides of the Iron Curtain back then," Jack allowed. "When we met in Berlin you were dressed differently-"

Ben Ezra rolled his head from side to side. "Outside of Israel I dress ultra-religious-I wear ritual fringes, the works. It is a kind of disguise. Inside Israel I dress ultra-secular, which explains the business suit. Can I propose you a gla.s.s of freshly squeezed mango juice? A yoghurt maybe? Iced tea, with or without ice?"

"Tea, with, why not?"

"Why not?" Ben Ezra agreed. "Two teas, with," he hollered into the other room where several people could be seen sitting around a kitchen table. Behind them two ticker-tape machines chattered unrelentingly. The Rabbi focused on his American guest. "So what brings you to the Promised Land, Mr. Jack?"

"A hunch."

"That much I know already. The Sorcerer called me long-distance, charges reversed, to say that if I heard from someone claiming to be you, it was." The Rabbi produced a saintly smile. "Harvey and me, we cover each others backsides. He said you had a tiger by the tail."

A dark-skinned Ethiopian girl, wearing a khaki miniskirt and a khaki Army sweater with a revealing V-neck, set two tall gla.s.ses of iced tea tinkling with ice cubes on the thick gla.s.s of the coffee table. A slice of fresh orange was embedded onto the rim of each gla.s.s. She said something in Hebrew and pointed to the delicate watch on her slim wrist. Ben Ezra scratched absently at the stubble of a beard on his chin. "Lama lo," he told her. He pulled the slice of orange off of the gla.s.s and began sucking on it. "So you want to maybe tell the Rabbi what's bothering you?"

Jack wondered if Ben Ezra was recording the conversation. His career would come to a sudden stop if the Rabbi played the tape for Angleton, who had run the Mossad account for years and still had admirers here. The Rabbi saw him hesitating. "You are having second thoughts about sharing information. I am not indifferent to such scruples. If you would feel more comfortable taking a rain check on this conversation..."

In his mind's eye Jack could see Leo Kritzky scooping water out of the toilet bowl with a tin cup and deliberately drinking from it. He could hear the defiance in Leo's voice as he rasped, "Go f.u.c.k yourself, Jack." What the h.e.l.l, he thought. I've come this far. And he began to walk the Rabbi through the circ.u.mstances surrounding the defection of Sergei Klimov (a.k.a. Sergei Kukushkin). "When Kukushkin was suddenly recalled to Moscow, we sent someone in to contact him-"

"Ah, I am beginning to see the handwriting on the wall," the Rabbi declared. "That explains what some crazy bones was doing in Moscow without diplomatic cover. Your someone was arrested, Klimov-Kukushkin was tried and executed, you swapped the Company arrestee for the NSA mole at the Glienicke Brucke." Ben Ezra pointed to the two gla.s.ses of iced tea. "We should drink up before they get warm." He raised one to his lips. "L'chaim-to life," he said and sipped noisily. "You think the trial and execution of this Klimov-Kukushkin could have been staged?"

"He wasn't polygraphed," Jack insisted.

"I am not sure how you think I can help."

"Look, Angleton is convinced Kukushkin was caught and tried and executed, which makes him genuine and his serials accurate. You people have a.s.sets in Russia that we only dream about. I thought you might take a second look. If Kukushkin was executed, there ought to be a grave somewhere, there ought to be a grief-stricken wife and daughter sc.r.a.ping to make ends meet."

"If he was not executed, if the whole thing was theater, there ought to be a Klimov-Kukushkin out there somewhere."

"Exactly."

"Where in your opinion should one start one's inquiries?"

"Just before the two of them were arrested, Kukushkin told our guy he was living in a three-room apartment in a hotel reserved for transient KGB officers."

Wrinkled lids closed over the Rabbi's bulging eyes as he searched his memory. "That would be the Alekseevskaya behind the Lubyanka on Malenkaia Lubyanka Street. I suppose, correct me if I am wrong, you have brought with you photographs of this Klimov-Kukushkin and his wife and daughter."

Jack pulled an envelope from his breast pocket. "These are copies of the State Department forms filed by foreign diplomats when they arrive in Washington-I've thrown in several FBI telephoto mug shots for good measure. If your people came up with anything I would be very grateful."

Ben Ezra's eyes flicked open and focused intently on his visitor. "How grateful?"

"I've heard that one of the n.a.z.is on the Mossad's ten most wanted list is Klaus Barbie-"

The Rabbi's voice came across as a wrathful growl now. "He was the Gestapo chief in Lyons during the war-many thousands of Jews, kiddies, women, old men, innocents every last one of them, were dragged off to the death camps because of him. The Butcher of Lyons, as he is known here, worked for the US Army in Germany after the war. He fled Europe one jump ahead of our agents-where we don't know. Yet."

"A file has pa.s.sed through my hands... in it was the name of the Latin American country where Barbie is believed to be living."

The Rabbi pushed down on his cane, levering himself to his feet. "You would not like to make a down payment for services certain to be rendered?" he inquired. "It is not as if your people and mine are strangers to each other."

Jack stood, too. "Barbie is in Bolivia."

Ben Ezra pulled an index card and a ballpoint pen from a pocket and offered them to Jack. "Write, please, a private phone number where I can reach you in Washington, Mr. Jack. We will for sure be in touch."

Sometime after midnight a frail, gray-haired woman wearing faded silk Uzbek leggings under her ankle-length skirt pushed the cleaning cart through the double doors into the lobby of the Hotel Alekseevskaya. She emptied the ash trays into a plastic bucket and wiped them clean with a damp cloth, rearranged the chairs around the coffee tables, replaced the dessert menus that were torn or stained, polished the mirrors hanging on the walls. Using a skeleton key attached to her belt, she opened a closet and took out the hotel's old Swedish Electrolux. Plugging it into a wall socket, she started vacuuming the threadbare carpets scattered around the lobby. Gradually she worked her way behind the check-in counter and began to vacuum the rugs there, too. The night porter, an elderly pensioner who worked the graveyard shift to supplement his monthly retirement check, always went to the toilet to sneak a cigarette while the Uzbek woman vacuumed behind the counter. Alone for several minutes, she left the Electrolux running and rummaged in the wooden "Mail to be forwarded" bin on one side of the switchboard. She found the small package easily; she'd been told it would be wrapped in brown paper and tied with a length of yellow cord. The package, which had been dropped off by a courier too late to be forwarded that day, was addressed to a recent resident, Elena Antonova Klimova, Hotel Alekseevskaya, Malenkaia Lubyanka Street, Moskva. At the bottom left of the package someone had written in ink: "Pereshlite Adresatu-please forward." The day clerk at the hotel's reception desk had crossed out "Hotel Alekseevskaya" and written in an address not far from the Cistyeprudnyi metro stop. The cleaning woman slipped the small package into her waistband and went back to vacuuming.

When she quit work at eight the next morning, she brought the package to the small used-clothing store on a side street off the Arbat run by the Orlev brothers. It was the older of the two, Mandel Orlev, dressed in the dark suit and dark raincoat a.s.sociated with operatives of the KGB, who had delivered the package to the hotel the previous afternoon. Mandel, elated to discover that their scheme appeared to have worked, collected his briefcase and made his way to Cistyeprudnyi by metro and then on foot to the address written on the package. Taking a book from the briefcase, he sat reading for hours in the small neighborhood park separated by a low fence from the entrance to number 12 Ogorodnaia. A dozen people came and went but none of them resembled the description of Klimov-Kukushkin or his wife, Elena, or their daughter, Ludmilla. When it started to grow dark Mandel's brother, Baruch, relieved him and hung around until after ten, by which time he was too cold to remain any longer. The next day, and the day following, the two brothers spelled each other watching the entrance to number 12 Ogorodnaia. It wasn't until the morning of the fourth day that their patience was rewarded. A Zil driven by a chauffeur pulled up in front of the door and a man with long, vaguely blond hair and the heavy shoulders and thick body of a wrestler emerged from the back seat. He used a key to open the front door of the building and disappeared inside. Three quarters of an hour later he reappeared, followed by a short, heavy woman with close-cropped hair that was beginning to turn white. The two talked for a moment on the sidewalk until a slender girl of about eight came running out of the building behind them. The parents laughed happily.

In the park, Mandel Orlev positioned his battered briefcase and tripped the shutter of the West German Robot Star II camera hidden under the flap.

10.

WASHINGTON, DC, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1974.

OUTSIDE, RAZOR-EDGED GUSTS CURLING OFF THE CHESAPEAKE flayed the trees, giant waves lashed the sh.o.r.eline. From his room on the third floor of the private sanatorium, Leo Kritzky watched nature's riot through the storm window. His wife, Adelle, was brewing up a pot of coffee on the electric plate. "You look much better," she was saying as she cut the banana cake she'd baked and handed him a wedge. "The difference is night and day."

"No place to go but up," Leo said.

"You planning to tell me what happened?" she asked, her back toward him.

"We've been through all that," Leo said. "Can't."

Adelle turned to face Leo. She had suffered also, though n.o.body seemed much concerned about that. "The United States Congress pa.s.sed the Freedom of Information Act over President Ford's veto today," she told him. Try as she might she couldn't keep the anger out of her voice. "Which means ordinary citizens can sue the CIA to get at your secrets. But my husband disappears for four months and one week and turns up looking like he survived the Bataan death march and n.o.body-not you, not the people who work with you-will tell me what's going on."

Leo said, "That's the way it has to be, Adelle."

From things Jack had said-and not said-Adelle had figured out that the Company had done this to Leo. "You can't let them get away with it," she whispered.

Leo stared out the window, wondering how trees could be pushed so far over and still not break. He had been pushed over, too; like the trees, he had not broken. There had been days when he'd been tempted to sign the confession that Angleton left on the table during the interrogations; the morning he discovered the dead body of the Sphinx of Siberia, he would have killed himself if he could have figured out how to do it.

It was one month to the day since Jack and Ebby had turned up in his padded cell, a doctor and a nurse in tow, to set him free. "You've been cleared, old buddy," Jack had said. His voice had choked with emotion. "Angleton, all of us, made a horrible mistake."

Tears had welled in Ebby's eyes and he had had to look away while the doctor examined Leo. His hair, or what was left of it, had turned a dirty white, his bruised eye sockets had receded into his skull, a scaly eczema covered his ankles and stomach.

"Where are we here-Gestapo headquarters?" the doctor had remarked as he was taking Leo's pulse. He had produced a salve for the eczema and a concoction of vitamins in a plastic container, which Leo began sipping through a straw. "What in G.o.d's name did you guys think you were doing?"

Leo had answered for them. "They were defending the Company from its enemies," he had said softly. "They only just discovered I wasn't one of them."

"We were led up the primrose path," Ebby had said miserably. "Somehow we have to make it up to you."

Leo had plucked at Jack's sleeve while they were waiting for the nurse to return with a wheelchair. "How'd you figure it out?" he had asked.

"You figured it out," Jack had said. "You predicted the walk-in would never be fluttered. He wasn't. The Russians pulled him back to Moscow on a pretext, just the way you said they would. Then they arrested him. There was a trial and an execution. Only it all turned out to be theater. We found out the walk-in was still among the living, which meant his serials were planted. For some reason they wanted Angleton to decide you were SASHA."

"Trying to throw him off the scent of the real SASHA," Leo had guessed.

"That's as good an explanation as I've heard," Jack had said.

"And Angleton? Does he admit-"

"His days are numbered. Colby is offering him a Chief of Station post to get him out of Washington. Angleton's hanging on to counterintelligence with his fingernails. He's mustering his troops but there aren't many of them left. Skinny is the Director's trying to work up the nerve to fire him."

"Not Angleton's fault," Leo had said.

Leo's lucidity had unnerved Ebby. "After what you've been through how can you, of all people-"

"Heard you say it more than once, Eb. If something's worth doing, worth doing badly. Can't run counterintelligence wearing kid gloves. It's a dirty job. Mistakes inevitable. Important not to be afraid of making them."

Leo had been helped to his feet by Jack and Ebby. Before allowing himself to be taken from the room, he had shuffled over to the toilet and reached down behind the pipes to recover the corpse of the moth he had hidden there. "If only you'd held out a bit longer," he had whispered, "you would have been set free."

Now, in the third-floor room of the private sanatorium, Adelle filled two cups with steaming coffee. She gave one to Leo at the window and pulled over a chair to sit next to him. "I wasn't going to hit you over the head until you'd had a chance to mend," she said. "But I think we have to talk about it-"

"Talk about what?"

"Your att.i.tude. Jack let slip that the legal people came by to offer you a package settlement."

"Jack ought to learn to keep his lips b.u.t.toned."

"He and the others-they're all kind of awed by your att.i.tude. You seem to have waived any claim to compensation."

"In any combat situation soldiers are wounded or killed by friendly fire all the time. I've never heard of any of them suing the government."

"There's no war on, Leo-"

"Dead wrong, Adelle. You were close enough to Lyndon Johnson to know there's a h.e.l.l of a war raging out there. I was wounded by friendly fire. As soon as I'm well enough I plan to return to the battle."

Adelle shook her head incredulously. "After what you've been through- after what they put you through-after what I and the girls have been through!-you still refuse to quit the Company." She gazed out the window. After a while she said, "We honeymooned not far from here."

Leo nodded slowly. "We watched the sun rising over Chesapeake Bay..."

"Our life together began with two deaths-your dog and my cat. And then we turned our backs on death and went forward toward life." She started to choke up. "Everything happening at once... my father dying... you disappearing without a trace. I couldn't sleep, Leo... I stayed up nights wondering if you were alive, wondering if I'd ever see you again. All those nights, all those weeks, I felt that death was right behind me, looking over my shoulder. It can't go on like this, Leo. You have to choose-"

"Adelle, this conversation is a terrible mistake. You're too emotional. Give it time-"

"You can only have one of us, Leo-the Company or me."

"Please don't do this."