The Company_ A Novel Of The CIA Part 61

"We won't be sure until he's on our side of the Iron Curtain," he said. "But I think the fix is in."

Nellie grabbed the phone back. "How are you going to get him out?"

"Can't tell you that, Nellie. Bear with us. Pack a bag and be ready to leave at a moment's notice."

"Where am I going?"

"Stop asking dumb questions. Ebby wanted you both to know that we're working on something, that it's looking good. When Manny comes out we thought you'd like to be there."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I would. Like to be there. Thanks, Jack."

"Sure."

A film of fog blanketed the Havel River separating West Berlin from Potsdam in the Soviet Zone, deadening the hollow knell from a distant steeple on the eastern bank. Soon after midnight, seven Jeeps and a lorry with mud-splashed Red Army stars on its doors pulled up on the Potsdam side of the Glicnicbe Bridge. The lead Jeep flashed its lights twice. From the American end of the bridge came two answering flashes. Russian soldiers lowered the lorry's tailgate and a tall, slightly stooped man wearing a shapeless raincoat jumped down onto the road. The Russian colonel checked the luminous dial of his wrist.w.a.tch, men nodded at two soldiers, who took up position on either side of the road in the raincoat. They accompanied him past the raised barrier onto the suspension bridge. A quarter of the way along it, the two Russian soldiers stopped in their tracks and the tall civilian kept walking. A figure could be seen heading toward him from the far end. He was wearing thick gla.s.ses that had turned fuliginous in the light from the bridge's wrought-iron lampposts. The two slowed as they approached each other in me middle of the bridge. Regarding each other warily, they stopped to exchange a few words.

"You speak Russian?" asked the younger man.

The second man, appearing disoriented, worked his bony fingers through his thinning hair. "No."

The younger man found himself smiling at a private joke. "Unfortunately for you, you'll have the rest of your life to learn."

As the bespectacled man approached the Soviet side the Russian colonel started forward to greet him. "Welcome to freedom," he called.

"I'm d.a.m.ned glad to be here."

On the American side, a man and a young woman were waiting impatiently in front of a line of Jeeps. The man was peering through binoculars. "It's him, all right," he said.

The woman darted forward to meet the young man approaching under the wrought-iron lampposts. "Are you all right?" she breathed as she flung herself into his arms.

The two clung to each other. "I'm fine," he said.

The man with the binoculars came up behind her. The two men shook hands emotionally. "I broke the eleventh commandment," said the young man.

"We don't think it was your fault," the other man replied. "The way they pulled out his wife and daughter on a moment's notice, then brought him home a day later-given how the game played out, it all begins to look very premeditated. They must have become suspicious of him in Was.h.i.+ngton and then just outplayed us. You were sent on a wild-goose chase."

"I lost my Joe, Dad. He's dead. Jim Angleton was right-I was too green. I must have gone wrong somewhere-"

The three started toward the Jeeps. "I know how you feel," remarked the man with binoculars. "I've been there a bunch of times. It's the downside of what we do for a living."

"Is there an upside?" the girl demanded.

"Yes, there is," he shot back. "We're doing a dirty job and we get it right most of the time. But there's no way you can get it right every time." The fog was rolling in off the river, imparting a pungent sharpness to the night air. What keeps us going, what keeps us sane," he added, talking to himself now, is the conviction that if something's worth doing, it's worth doing badly."

9.

SANTA FE, SAt.u.r.dAY, OCTOBER 12, 1974.

JACK CAUGHT AN EARLY MORNING FLIGHT FROM DULLES TO ALBUQUERQUE, then rented a car at the airport and drove an hour up the interstate to Santa Fe. Following the Sorcerer's fuzzy directions as best he could, stopping twice at gas stations to ask directions, he finally found East of Eden Gardens east of the city, on the edge of a golf course. In a billboard planted halfway down the access road, East of Eden Gardens was advertised as a promoters' vision of what paradise must be like, though Jack had a sneaking suspicion the promoters didn't actually live there themselves. Smart folks. The sprawling condominium community, semi-attached bungalows made of fake adobe and set at weird angles to each other, was surrounded by a no-nonsense chain-link fence topped with coils of Army surplus concertina wire to keep the Hispanics from nearby Espanola out. For all Jack knew, there could have been a minefield under the belt of Astroturf inside the fence. His ident.i.ty was controlled at the gatehouse by an armed and uniformed guard wearing Raybans. "Got a message for you from Mista Torriti," he said, checking Jack's name off the list on the clipboard. "If you was to get here after eleven and before four, you'll find him at the clubhouse." Following the guards instructions, Jack drove through an intestinal tangle of narrow streets named for dead movie stars, past a driving range, past a communal swimming pool shaped to look like the most fragile part of a promoter's body, the kidney.

"Jesus H. Christ, Harvey, I didn't know you'd taken up golf," Jack exclaimed when he found the Sorcerer nursing a Scotch on the rocks at the empty bar.

"Haven't taken up golf," Torriti said, squeezing his Apprentice's hand with his soft fingers, punching him playfully in the shoulder. "Taken up drinking in golf clubs. Everyone who owns a condo is a member. Members get happy-hour prices all day long. All night, too."

The Sorcerer bought Jack a double Scotch and another double for himself, and the two carried their drinks and a bowl of olives to a booth at the back of the deserted clubhouse.

"Where's everybody?" Jack asked.

"Out golfin'," Torriti said with a smirk. "I'm the only one here who doesn't own clubs." He waved toward the adobe condominiums on the far side of the kidney-shaped pool. "It's a retirement home, Jack. You get free maid service, you can order in from the club kitchen, faucet drips and you got a handyman knocking at your door by the time you hang up the phone. Halfa dozen ex-Langley types live out here; we got an all-Company dealer's choice game going Monday nights."

"Aside from drinking and poker, how do you make time pa.s.s in the middle of nowhere?"

"You won't believe me if I tell you."

"Try me."

"I read spy stories. I finished one yesterday called The Spy Who Came in from the Cold The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by someone name of le Carre." by someone name of le Carre."

"And?"

"He gets the mood right-he understands that Berlin was a killing field. He understands that those of us who lived through it were never the same again. People could learn more about the Cold War reading le Carre than they can from newspapers. But he loses me when he says spies are people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. What a load of bulls.h.i.+t! How about you, sport? Hows tricks?"

"Can't complain," Jack said.

"So what brings you to Santa Fe? Don't tell me you were just pa.s.sing through and wanted to chew the fat. Won't swallow that."

Jack laughed. "I wanted to see how retirement was treating the honcho of Berlin Base, Harvey."

Torriti's red-rimmed eyes danced merrily, as if he had heard a good joke. "I'll bet. What else?"

"You read the newspapers?"

"Don't need to. Anything concerning my ex-employer turns up in the news, one of my poker pals fills me in." The Sorcerer plucked an ice cube from the gla.s.s and ma.s.saged his lids with it. "I heard about the joker from NSA you traded for one of ours, if that's what you want to know. Newspapers said he was a low-level paper pusher, but I wasn't born yesterday."

Jack leaned forward and lowered his voice. "He was a mid-level a.n.a.lysist working on Russian intercepts-"

"Which means the Ruskies knew what we were intercepting, which means they were filling it with s.h.i.+t."

Jack took a sip of Scotch. He wondered if the Sorcerer broke down and ordered solids at lunchtime. "But they didn't know we knew. Now they do."

"How'd you trip to him?"

"We got a walk-in at the Russian emba.s.sy. He wanted to defect but we talked him into spying in place until his tour was up. He gave us two important things, Harvey-the NSA mole and a series of serials that led Jim Angleton to SASHA."

The Sorcerer rolled his head from side to side, impressed. "Where's the problem?"

"What makes you think there's a problem?"

"You wouldn't be here if there wasn't."

"Something's bothering me, Harvey. I thought, if your twitching nose was still functioning, you might help me sort through it."

"Try me."

"Like I was saying, based on the walk-in's serials, Angleton identified SASHA. He told us he'd been closing in on him, that it was only a matter of time before he narrowed it down to two or three. The walk-ins serials speeded up the inevitable, that's what Mother said."

"You want to go whole-hog."

Jack was whispering now. "It's Kritzky. Leo Kritzky."

A whistle seeped through Torriti's lips. "The Soviet Division chief! Jesus, it's Kim Philby redux, only this time it's in our shop."

"Angleton's been giving Leo the third degree for four months and then some, but he hasn't cracked. Leo claims he's innocent and Angleton hasn't been able to make him admit otherwise."

"Seems open and shut, sport-everything depends on the walk-in inside the Russian emba.s.sy. Flutter him. If he's telling the truth"-Torriti's shoulders heaved inside a very loud sports jacket-"eliminate SASHA."

"Can't polygraph the walk-in," Jack said. He explained how Kukushkin's wife and daughter had suddenly flown home to be with her dying father; how Kukushkin had followed them back to Moscow the next day.

"Did the father die?"

"As far as we can tell, yes. There was a funeral. There was an obituary."

Torriti waved these tidbits away.

"That's what we thought, too, Harv. So we sent Kukushkin's controlling officer to Moscow to speak to him."

"Without diplomatic cover."

"Without diplomatic cover," Jack conceded.

"And he was picked up. And then he confessed to being CIA. And then you traded the NSA mole to get him back."

Jack concentrated on his drink.

"Who was the controlling officer?"

"Elliott Ebbitt's boy, Manny."

Torriti pulled a face. "Never did like that Ebbitt fellow but that's neither here nor there. What did Manny have to say when he came in?"

"He was at Kukushkin's trial. He heard him confess. He heard the verdict. Kukushkin turned up in his cell to ask him to acknowledge being CIA in order to save his family. That's what Manny's so-called confession was all about-it was in return for an amnesty for the wife and kid. That night he heard the firing squad execute Kukushkin-"

"How did he know it was Kukushkin being executed?"

"He cried out right before. Manny recognized his voice."

The Sorcerer munched on an olive, spit the pit into a palm and deposited it in an ashtray. "So what's bothering you, kid?"

"My stomach. I'm hungry."

Torriti called over to the Hispanic woman sitting on a stool behind the cash register. "DOS BIT'S sobre tostado, honey," he called. "DOS cervezas tambien."

Jack said, "I didn't know you spoke Spanish, Harvey."

"I don't. You want to go and tell me what's really bothering you?"

Jack toyed with a salt cellar, turning it in his fingers. "Leo Kritzky and I go back a long way, Harv. We roomed together at Yale. He's my son's G.o.dfather, for Christ's sake. To make a long story shorter, I visited him in Angleton's black hole. Mother has him drinking water out of the toilet bowl."

The Sorcerer didn't see anything particularly wrong with this. "So?"

"Number one: He hasn't broken. I offered him a way out that didn't involve spending the rest of his life in prison. He told me to f.u.c.k off."

"Considering the time and money you spent to come here, there's got to be a number two."

"Number two: Leo said something that's been haunting me. He was absolutely certain our walk-in would never be fluttered." Jack stared out the window as he quoted Leo word for word. "He said Kukushkin would be run over by a car or mugged in an alleyway or whisked back to Mother Russia for some c.o.c.kamamie reason that would sound plausible enough. But he wouldn't be fluttered because we would never get to bring him over. And he wouldn't be brought over because he was a dispatched defector sent to convince Angleton that Kritzky was SASHA and take the heat off the real SASHA. And it played out just the way Leo said it would."

"Your walk-in wasn't polygraphed because he rushed back to Moscow for a funeral. After which he was arrested and tried and executed."

"What do you think, Harvey?"

"What do I think?" Torriti considered the question. Then he tweaked the tip of his nose with a forefinger. "I think it stinks."

"That's what I think, too."

"Sure that's what you think. You wouldn't be here otherwise."

"What can I do now? How do I get a handle on this?"

The Hispanic woman backed through a swinging door from the kitchen carrying a tray. She set the sandwiches and the beers down on the table. When she'd gone, Torriti treated himself to a swig of beer. "Drinking a lot is the best revenge," he said, blotting his lips on a sleeve. "About your little problem-you want to do what I did when I ran up against a stone wall in my hunt for Philby."

"Which is?"

"Which is get ahold of the Rabbi and tell him your troubles."

"I didn't know Ezra Ben Ezra was still among the living."