The Company_ A Novel Of The CIA Part 72

"Yevgeny's father alerted the New York resident, who sent an American Communist named Stella Bledsoe to recruit me."

"Your girlfriend Stella!" Jack gazed across the room at the framed black-and-white photograph hanging on the wall, the one taken after the 1950 Harvard-Yale boat race. He couldn't make out the caption but since he'd written it, he recollected it: "Jack & Leo & Stella after The Race but before The Fall". Now he said with a sneer, "I remember Stella slipping into my room that night-"

"She snuck into your room and screwed you so I would have a plausible explanation for breaking off with her. Moscow Centre wanted to put some distance between Stella and me in case the FBI discovered her connection with the American Communist Party, which is what happened when Whittaker Chambers identified her as a fellow traveler he'd met at Party meetings after the war."

Jack tugged angrily on the handcuff and the metal bit into the skin on his wrist. "What a sap I was to trust you."

"It was Stella who instructed me to go out for Crew when they learned that Coach Waltz was a talent scout for the new Central Intelligence Agency. The idea was for me to get close to him. The rest of the story you know, Jack. You were there when he made his pitch to us."

Jack looked up suddenly. "What about Adelle? Was she planned, too?"

Leo turned away. "Adelle's not the part of the story I'm the most comfortable with," he admitted. "The Centre wanted me to marry into the Washington establishment, both to further my career and to give me other sources of intelligence. The rezidentura more or less picked Adelle out because she worked for Lyndon Johnson, also because her father was rich and powerful and had access to the White House. They arranged for our paths to cross."

"But you met by chance at a veterinarian," Jack remembered.

Leo nodded grimly. "When Adelle was away at work, they broke into her apartment and dropped her cat out a fourth-floor window. I picked up an old dog at the pound and fed him enough rat poison to make him sick. I took him to her vet knowing Adelle would show up with her cat. If that hadn't worked out we would have figured another way to make our paths cross.

Jack, stunned, sat there shaking his head. "I almost feel sorry for you, Leo."

"The truth is I grew to love her," Leo said. "I adore my girls..." Then he blurred out, "I never accepted a penny, Jack. I risked my neck for peace, for a better world. I didn't betray a country-I have a higher loyalty... an international conception of things."

"Just for the record, explain the ae/PINNACLE caper, Leo. Kukushkin was a dispatched defector-but weren't they taking a big risk accusing you of being SASHA? We might have believed it."

"It's not very complicated," Leo said. "Angleton was slowly narrowing down the list of suspects through a careful a.n.a.lysis of failed and successful operations, and who was a.s.sociated with them. My name was on all the overlaps. Moscow Centre-or more precisely, my controlling officer- decided Angleton was getting uncomfortably close, so he organized ae/PINNACLE to lure Angleton into accusing me. Kukushkin would have been unmasked as a dispatched agent even if you hadn't brought the Israelis in. Once Kukushkin was discredited, the case against me would fall apart. And Angleton would be ruined. We killed two birds with one stone."

"Where do you go from here, Leo? Yevgeny is being watched twenty-four hours a day. You'll never get away."

"I'll get away and so will Yevgeny. We have contingency plans for situations like this. All we need is a head start, which is what those handcuffs will buy me. Tomorrow morning I'll phone Elizabet and tell her where you are."

"So this is how it all ends," Jack said bitterly.

"Not quite. There's one more piece of business, Jack. I want to pa.s.s some secrets on to you." Leo couldn't restrain a grim smile when he spotted the incredulity in Jack's eyes. "The Soviet Union is coming apart at the seams. If it weren't for oil exports and the worldwide energy crisis, the economy would probably have collapsed years ago. The Cold War's winding down. But there are people on my side who want it to wind down with a bang. Which brings me to the subject of KHOLSTOMER-"

"There is a KHOLSTOMER! Angleton was right again."

"I'll let you in on another secret, Jack. I've had qualms about KHOLSTOMER all along, but I wasn't sure what to do about it until I talked with Fet today. When I learned about the KGB plotting to put Stingers in the hands of people who would shoot them at Russian pilots, not to mention their role in my G.o.dson's kidnapping-" Leo, his face contorted, whispered, "For me, it's as if the KGB amputated Anthony's toe. Jack. That was the last straw. Enough is enough. Listen up."

Jack's sense of irony was returning. "Consider me your captive audience," he remarked dryly.

"Andropov is dying. Jack. From what I hear-both from Company sources and from Starik-the General Secretary is not always lucid-"

"You mean he's off his rocker."

"He has periods of lucidity. He has other periods where his imagination takes hold and the world he sees is c.o.c.keyed. Right now he's in one of his c.o.c.keyed phases. Andropov is convinced that Reagan and the Pentagon are planning to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union-"

"That's preposterous and you know it," Jack burst out.

"I've sent back word that it's not true. But I have reason to believe my reports have been doctored to feed into Andropov's paranoia."

"How could you know that from Washington?"

"I surmise it from the queries I get from Moscow Centre-they're focused on ABLE ARCHER 83, they want to know if the Pentagon could be keeping the CIA in the dark about plans for a preemptive strike. I've told them it's out of the realm of possibility but they keep coming back with the same questions. They say I must be missing something, they instruct me to look again."

"Where does KHOLSTOMER fit in?" Jack asked.

"KHOLSTOMER is Moscow's response to ABLE ARCHER 83. Believing the US is going to launch a preemptive war on December first, Andropov has authorized Starik to implement KHOLSTOMER-they plan to flood the spot market with dollars and cause the American currency, and ultimately the American economy, to crash."

"I'm not an economist," Jack said, "but they'd need an awful lot of greenbacks to make a dent in the market."

"They have an awful lot of dollars," Leo said. "Starik has been siphoning off hard currency for decades. He has slightly more than sixty billion dollars sitting in off-sh.o.r.e banks around the world. On top of that, he has agents of influence in four key countries ready to push the central banks into selling off US bonds once the dollar starts to nosedive. On D-day I'm supposed to monitor the Federal Reserve's reaction and the movement in the bond market. The thing could spiral out of control-the more the dollar goes down, the more people will panic and sell off dollars and US bonds to protect their positions. At least that's what Starik is counting on."

"Can you identify the agents of influence?"

"No. But I know which countries they're supposed to be operating in. Our stations-"

A half smile crept onto Jack's face. "Our?"

Leo grinned back. "I've been leading a double life for a long time. Your stations ought to be able to figure out which one of the people close to the central bank of any given country might be a Soviet agent of influence."

"If in doubt," Jack said, "we could always neutralize the three or four leading candidates. That's how the KGB operates, isn't it?"

Leo exploded, "Don't be so pious, Jack! Your stations trained the secret police in Vietnam, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Iraq, Iran- the list is as long as my arm. You looked the other way when your clients arrested and tortured and a.s.sa.s.sinated their political opponents. The Phoenix Operation in Vietnam, with its tiger cages on Con Son Island, killed or crippled some twenty thousand Vietnamese suspected-only suspected, Jack, not convicted!-of being pro-Communist."

"The Company was fighting fire with fire-" Jack insisted.

"Fire with fire!" Leo repeated scornfully. " You financed and equipped and trained armies of agents and then abandoned them-the Cubans in Miami, the Khambas in Tibet, the Sumatran colonels in Indonesia, the Meos in Laos, the Montagnards in Vietnam, the National Chinese in Burma, the Ukrainians in Russia, the Kurds in Iraq."

Jack said, very quietly, "You're the last person on earth who ought to climb on a moral high horse, buddy."

Leo rose to his feet. "I've admired you all of my adult life, Jack. Even before you made it off the beach at the Bay of Pigs, you were a hero to me- it didn't matter that we were on different sides of the fence. I still have that mug shot of you in the senior yearbook-'Jack McAuliffe, mad, bad and dangerous to know.' You were always mad, you were sometimes bad- but you were never dangerous to know." Leo shrugged tiredly. "I'm sorry, Jack." His lips tightened and he nodded once. "Sorry that our friendship had to end this way..."

Jack had a vision of Leo filling the tin cup from Angleton's toilet and drinking off the water, and then turning to him to whisper through his raw lips Go f.u.c.k yourself. Jack Go f.u.c.k yourself. Jack. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him, "You too, Leo-go f.u.c.k yourself, huh?" But he stopped himself and said instead: "You're eating into your head start, buddy."

"Yeah, I am." Leo retrieved a plastic airline bag from a closet, then switched on the radio and turned up the volume. "Listen up, Jack," he called from the door. "My Russian friends aren't going to publicize my defection if I can help it-I want to protect the girls and my ex-wife. Also, I haven't told Moscow Centre about the Israeli raid. I hope to G.o.d it works out."

Jack couldn't bring himself to thank SASHA; he would have gagged on the words if he had tried. But he lifted his free paw to acknowledge this last favor.

The skinny black kid, decked out in a tight red jump suit with the name "Latrell" embroidered over the breast pocket, shook his head emphatically. 'h.e.l.l, there couldn't be no mistake,' he insisted. 'No way.' He leafed through the packet of order forms and came up with one. 'Looka here, mister,' he said. 'One Neapolitan without olives. The orderer is-" he named a street in Tysons Corner, a house number. 'The apartment over the garage at the end of the driveway, that's you, ain't it?'

"That's me," Yevgeny admitted. "What's the name on the order?"

The black kid held the form up to the light seeping through the partly open door. "Dodgson," he said. "You Dodgson?"

Yevgeny reached for the pizza. "How much do I owe you?"

"Five-fifty."

Yevgeny came up with a five and two ones and told the kid to keep the change. He shut the door and stood with his back pressed against it until the pounding in his chest subsided. A pizza delivered to Dodgson, the name Yevgeny had abandoned when his ident.i.ty had been blown twenty-two years before, was SASHA's emergency signal. It meant the world had come to an end. It meant the Americans had somehow managed to identify the cutout who serviced SASHA. FBI agents were probably watching him day and night. Gradually, a semblance of calm seeped back into Yevgeny's thought process. Start with a single fact and follow the logic of it, he told himself. Fact: they hadn't arrested him yet, which was a good omen-it must mean they were hoping he would lead them to SASHA. Which meant that they didn't know who SASHA was. Which in turn suggested that the weak link was between the KGB's Washington resident and Yevgeny: Aida Tannenbaum.

Fortunately for Yevgeny, SASHA had learned about the breakthrough and had now warned Yevgeny the only way he could. Okay. The next thing he had to do was go through the motions of going to bed-leave enough of the window shades halfway up so that anyone watching through binoculars would see that he didn't have a worry in the world.

Yevgeny cut out a wedge of pizza and forced himself to eat it while he watched the end of a movie on the small portable TV set. He changed into pajamas and brushed his teeth and, switching out the lights in the other rooms, retreated to the small bedroom. He sat up in bed for a quarter of an hour going through the motions of reading Philip Roth's The Anatomy Lesson The Anatomy Lesson. The truth of the matter was that his eyes were incapable of focusing on the words; that the pulse throbbing in his forehead made thinking difficult. Yawning, he set the book down, wound his clock and checked the alarm. Almost as an afterthought, he padded over to the window and pulled down the shade. Climbing under the covers, he switched off the light on the night table.

In the total darkness, the sounds from the neighborhood seemed amplified. Every quarter hour or so he could make out the bus coming down Broad Street, two blocks away. Sometime after midnight he caught the sc.r.a.pe of a garage door opening and a car backing down a driveway. At 12:25 he heard the next door neighbor calling to his dog to pee already, for Christ's sake. His brain awash with scenarios, Yevgeny lay there motionless until the luminous hour hand on the alarm clock clicked onto three. Then, moving stealthily, he slipped into his clothing and overcoat and, carrying his shoes, made his way to the bathroom in his stockinged feet. He flushed the toilet-they might have planted a microphone in the apartment-and while the water was gushing through the pipes, eased open the small window that gave out onto the sloping roof of the toolshed attached to the back of the garage. Once on the roof, he let himself down the incline and climbed down the trellis to the ground. Here he put his shoes on and tied the laces and, crouching in the shadows, listened. The night was cold; with each breath he expelled a small cloud of vapor. From the back bedroom of a nearby house came the sound of a hacking cough. A bed lamp flicked on, then was switched off again. After a long while Yevgeny rose to his feet and crossed the yard, moving in the shadow of the high wooden fence that separated the back garden from the next door neighbor's paved basketball court. At the end of the garden he climbed over a wooden fence and, moving sideways, squeezed through the s.p.a.ce between two garages. Halfway to the end, under a boarded up window, he felt for the chipped brick and, working it loose, plunged his hand into the cavity to retrieve the package wrapped in layers of plastic.

Twenty minutes later Yevgeny ducked into an all-night drugstore a mile or so up Broad Street. He ordered a coffee and a doughnut and made his way to the phone booths at the back. He had thrown away Aida's new phone number but he remembered the address: 47 Corcoran Street. He dialed information and requested the number of a party named Tannenbaum at that address. He dialed the number and heard the phone ring. After a dozen rings the breathless voice of Aida came on the line. "Who is this?" she demanded.

Yevgeny knew they would be tapping her phone. As long as he didn't remain on the line long enough for the call to be traced, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. "It's me, lovely lady."

He could hear a frightened gasp. "Something must be very wrong for you to call at this hour," Aida whispered.

"Yes. Something is wrong."

"Oh!"

"I have to hang up before they trace the call."

"Is it that bad, then?"

"You are a great lady, a great fighter, a heroine. I hold you in high esteem." Yevgeny hated to break the connection. He blurred out, "I wish there were something I could do for you."

"There is. Hang up quickly. Run fast, dear child. Save yourself. And remember me as I remember you."

Aida cut the line. Yevgeny listened to the dial tone ringing in his ear for several seconds, then hung up and, swaying unsteadily, stumbled back to the counter to nurse his coffee and doughnut. He glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch. He still had two and a half hours to kill before he met SASHA at the prearranged site.

Aida knew she should have been terrified but the only emotion she could detect was relief. After all these years it was finally going to end. She wedged a chair under the k.n.o.b of the front door and went down the hallway into the narrow kitchen. She wedged a chair under the k.n.o.b of that door, too, and stuffed the gap under the door with newspaper, then turned on the four gas burners and the oven. Lifting Silvester out of the basket lined with an old nightdress, she sat at the small linoleum-covered table and began to stroke his neck. She smiled when the old cat started to purr. She thought she heard a car pull up on the street somewhere under the window. It reminded her of the night the Gestapo had raided the warehouse where the Communist underground kept the printing press, and her dear, dear son, Alfred, was torn screaming from her arms. Was that the grind of the elevator starting up or just her imagination? She felt terribly, terribly tired. Fists were pounding on the door of the apartment. She rested her head on one arm and tried to summon an image of her son, but all she saw was her lover, Yevgeny, bending to kiss the back of her gloved hand. With a crash, the front door burst open against its hinges. Savoring the thought that she had finally run out of time, Aida reached for the box of safety matches.

6.

YATHRIB, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1983.

THE STRING OF CAMELS-THREE OF THEM CARRYING BURLAP SADDLE sacks filled with food, drinking water and ammunition; the twenty-five others loaded with long wooden crates, two to an animal- made their way across the fast-flowing stream. The twelve Arab herdsmen, all heavily armed, all wearing kiffiyeh drawn over their noses against the dust kicked up by the camels, had strung a thick cord from the rusted Russian tank awash in the water to a tree on the far bank and had posted themselves at intervals along the cord to steady any camel that lost its footing. Once on the other side the men paused for a lunch break. The practicing Muslims in the group prostrated themselves in the direction of Mecca and began to pray. The non-practicing among the herders brewed green tea in a beat-up ca.s.serole propped over a small fire. Chunks of stale bread, baked the previous day in shallow holes scooped out of the ground, and tins of humus were pa.s.sed around, along with raw onions. If anyone noticed the two Pashtuns inspecting them through binoculars from a cliff high above, he didn't call attention to the fact. When lunch was finished most of the men sat with their backs to trees, dozing or sucking on cigarettes. Five minutes before the hour the headman, a slim Egyptian wearing khaki fatigues and mirrored sungla.s.ses, climbed to his feet and, calling in Arabic, began rounding up the camels that had wandered off to graze. When the line was formed up and each animal was attached to the one in front, the herders flicked the birch switches against the flanks of the camels and the pack train started up the steep tracks. After several hours the caravan reached the narrow gorge. During another break for prayers, two Pashtuns and an Iraqi came through the gorge on horseback. Speaking in Arabic, the Iraqi exchanged greetings with the herders and chatted up the headman while the Pashtuns pried open several crates attached to the camels at random-each crate contained a spanking-new ground-to-air Stinger with American markings stenciled on the side along with a handbook printed in English. The headman and several of the herders had been trained by the CIA in the working of the weapon and would remain for a week or ten days to instruct the tribesmen after the Stingers had been delivered. Satisfied, the Pashtuns preceded the pack train through the gorge into a long canyon. As the trail widened and flattened out, the herders pa.s.sed the ruins of hamlets lost in tangles of vines. Toward sundown, they arrived at the walled compound at the bitter end of the trail. A mud-brick minaret rose from the mosque inside; from the top a muezzin was summoning the faithful to evening prayers. Pashtuns emerged from the stone houses built against the cliffs. The ones who were devout crowded into the mosque; the others, along with a swarm of teenage boys, came over to look at the Stinger that had been set out on an Army blanket.

Ibrahim, wearing a sheepskin vest and his Pashtun cap with the amulet to ward off sniper bullets pinned to it, strode across the compound. Behind him, his children watched from a doorway. Smiling jubilantly, Ibrahim greeted the Egyptian headman and offered him the creature comforts of the camp for as long as he and his comrades remained. The headman replied in elaborate Arabic that he appreciated his host's hospitality and would go to great lengths not to abuse it. Ibrahim retorted that his guest need not worry about abusing his hospitality-on the contrary, hospitality needed to be abused in order to measure its depth and the spirit in which it was offered.

Ibrahim turned away to join the fighters squatting around the Stinger. They looked like children inspecting a new toy as they gingerly reached out to caress the fins of the missile that would destroy Russian planes and helicopters so far away you could only hear them, not see them. No one paid attention when, in the gathering darkness, one of the Arab herdsmen swung closed the great double door to the compound. The others unslung their automatic weapons from their shoulders and nonchalantly started to fan out on either side of the men huddled around the Stinger. Several of the Arabs strolled over to a trough facing the door of the mosque. Two others started to meander across the compound toward the building that housed Ibrahim's prisoners.

Suddenly Ibrahim sniffed at the icy air and, threading his worry beads through the fingers of his left hand, rose slowly to his feet. It hit him that the great double doors, normally left open so that mujaheddin praying in the mosque could return to the hamlet, had been closed. Squinting into the duskiness, he noticed that the Arab herdsmen had spread out around the compound. He muttered something to his Shadow, who stepped behind him and closed his fingers over the hilt of the dagger in his waistband. In ones and twos, the Pashtuns, infected with Ibrahim's edginess, stood and peered into the shadowy stillness of the compound.

From over the rim of the hill came the distinctive thwak-thwak of helicopter rotors. Ibrahim shouted a warning as the Arab herdsmen opened fire. One of the first shots caught Ibrahim in the shoulder, spinning him into the arms of the Shadow. With a flutter of wings the yellow canary scampered free, dragging its leash behind it. Brilliant lights in the bellies of two giant insects overhead illuminated the compound as the helicopters sank straight down. Gatling guns spit bullets from open ports. One of the helicopters settled onto the ground, kicking up a squall of dust, the other hovered above the mosque and bombarded the hamlet below the compound, and me path coming up from the hamlet, with phosphorus sh.e.l.ls. From the doorways and windows of the buildings women shrieked in terror. The mujaheddin who bolted out of the dust cloud were cut down by rifle fire. The Egyptian headman knelt and fired and methodically changed clips and fired again at the Pashtuns spilling out of the mosque. Then, calling orders to his commandos in Hebrew, he started toward the fallen Ibrahim. "Take him alive!" someone shouted in English.

The Shadow drew his knife and, leaning over Ibrahim, looked questioningly into his eyes. "Recall your vow," Ibrahim pleaded. There was another staccato burst of automatic fire-to Ibrahim's ear it sounded like a distant tambour announcing his arrival in paradise. Soon he would be sitting on the right hand of the Prophet; soon he would be deep in conversation with the one true G.o.d. He could see the Prophet Ibrahim raising the sacrificial knife to the throat of his son Ismail on the black stone at the heart of the Kaaba. The vision instructed him on what he had to do. Murmuring "Khahesh mikonam, lotfi konin-I beg you, do me a kindness," he gripped the bodyguard's wrist with his good hand and coaxed the razor-whetted blade down toward his jugular.

In the attic prison, Anthony had drawn Maria Shaath into a corner when they heard gunfire in the compound. Moments later people broke into the room under their feet. "Its a commando raid," Anthony said. "But who will reach us first-Ibrahim or the raiders?" Someone set a ladder against the wall and began climbing the rungs. Anthony grabbed the small charcoal stove by its legs and positioned himself on the blind side of the trap door as it was pushed up on its hinges. A man fingering the trigger of a stubby Israeli Uzi, his face sheathed in a kiffiyeh, appeared. Maria screamed. Anthony raised the charcoal stove over his head and was about to bring it crashing down on the intruder when he said, in cheerful and flawless English, "Anyone here interested in hitching a helicopter ride to Pakistan?"

At the Company's high-walled villa off Jamrud Road in Peshawar, a young radioman sat in front of the transceiver with a crystal inserted, locking it onto a given frequency. He and his buddies had been monitoring the static twenty-four hours a day for the past week. Now, unexpectedly, what sounded like a human voice seeped through the background noise, repeating a single sentence.

"He promised me earrings but he only pierced my ears. I say again. He promised me earrings but he only pierced my ears."

The radioman ran his thumb nail down the list of code phrases in his notebook until he found the one he was looking for. He raced through the corridors and stuck his head in the door of the chief of station who had replaced Manny Ebbitt after the kidnapping. "The copters have broken radio silence," he blurted out.

"And?"

"They've sent a 'mission accomplished' message. They're in the air and on the way back."

"Encipher the message and send it on to Washington," the chief of station ordered. He sat back in relief. Jesus, the Israelis had pulled it off after all. The Champagne would flow at Langley when they learned that the helicopters were heading home. Thank goodness the naysayers had been wrong-it hadn't ended like Carter's raid to free the American hostages in Teheran after all.

The mujaheddin who had survived the Israeli raid were in for another surprise. When they tried to use the Stingers they would discover that the firing mechanisms had been removed, which made the weapons about as valuable as lengths of piping in a junkyard.

They met at first light in the back row of the First Baptist Church on l6th Street, not far from Scott Circle. There were only three early-morning worshipers in the church when Yevgeny slid into the pew and sat down next to Leo. For a moment neither said a word. Then, glancing at his cutout, Leo whispered harshly, "We always knew it had to end one day."

"It's been a long Cold War," Yevgeny said. He was thinking of Aida Tannenbaum. He could hear her voice in his ear: I will admit to you I am fatigued, Eugene. I have been fighting on one or another front line as far back as I can remember. I will admit to you I am fatigued, Eugene. I have been fighting on one or another front line as far back as I can remember.

Leo reached down, unzipped the airline bag between his feet and handed Yevgeny a small package. "I've had this stashed in a closet for years-it's a Company disguise kit. We'll go out as priests-there are black shirts, white collars, a goatee for me, a gray beard for you, wigs, rimless eyegla.s.ses. Your own brother wouldn't recognize you."

"My own brother barely recognized me when I was in Moscow on home leave," Yevgeny remarked. He took a manila envelope from his overcoat pocket. "Pa.s.sports, drivers licenses, and cash," he said.

"We'll change in the vestry," Leo said. "With any luck the Company'll concentrate on the hunt for my Chevrolet. We'll go by subway to the Greyhound terminal, take a bus to Baltimore, then a train to Buffalo, where we'll cross into Canada. I have an emergency address in Toronto where we can stay until they can smuggle us onto a cargo ship."

"What did you do with your car?" Yevgeny asked.

"I buried it in the long-term parking lot at Dulles and came back in a shuttle. We'll be far away by the time they find it."