The Company_ A Novel Of The CIA Part 79

Leo shrugged noncommittally.

"I take it you won't identify him."

"Or her."

Jack bristled. "Don't play games with me, Leo."

"I'm not playing games. I have a source but the CIA is the last organization I'd confide in. The KGB had you penetrated in my day. For all I know it still does. And the head of the KGB is masterminding the plot."

"What do you expect me to do with this information? Go to the New York Times Times and say that a guy I know has a guy he knows who says Moscow is heading for the waterfall in a barrel. Fat chance." and say that a guy I know has a guy he knows who says Moscow is heading for the waterfall in a barrel. Fat chance."

"For starters we thought-"

"We?"

"I thought you could warn the President, and the President could warn Gorbachev. Coming from George Bush, the word that there is a putsch afoot might impress him."

"You ought to be able to get word to Gorbachev inside Russia."

"Yeltsin has been warning him in a very general way for months. I've been told that he has now warned him in a very specific way, which is to say he's described meetings and named names. The trouble is that if Yeltsin told Gorbachev it was nighttime, he'd a.s.sume he was lying and it was really daytime." Leo turned his espresso cup round and round in its saucer. "Am I wrong in a.s.suming that the United States has a vested interest in seeing Gorbachev stay in power?"

"This is a side of you I'm not familiar with-looking out for the vested interests of the United States."

Leo kept a rein on his temper. "Answer the question."

"The answer is evident. We prefer Gorbachev to Yeltsin, and Yeltsin to Kryuchkov and his KGB chums."

"Then do something about it, dammit."

"Aside from warning Gorbachev I don't see what we can do. Unlike the folks you worked for we don't knock off people."

"What about Salvador Allende in Chile? What about General Abdul Karim Ka.s.sem in Iraq?"

"Those days are over," Jack insisted.

"They don't have to be. When the Company wanted to eliminate Castro, it brought in the Sorcerer and he farmed the contract out to freelancers outside the Company. This is important, Jack-a lot is hanging on it."

"The Sorcerer is drinking himself into a grave in East of Eden Gardens." He spotted the puzzled narrowing of Leo's eyes. "That's a retirement village in Santa Fe."

Leo sipped his espresso; he didn't appear to notice that it had grown cold. "What about the Devisenbeschaffer? If the putschists don't get Gorbachev on the first try, they'll still have the bankroll in Dresden. They can cause a lot of pain with that amount of money."

Jack brightened. He obviously had an idea. "Okay, I'll see what I can concoct. Give me a meeting place in Moscow. Let's say six P.M. local time one week from today."

"I won't talk to anyone from your Moscow Station-the emba.s.sy is riddled with microphones."

"I was thinking more along the lines of sending in someone from the outside."

"Does the person know Moscow?"

"No."

Leo thought a moment, then named a place that anybody ought to be able to find.

Jack and Leo stood up. Jack glanced at the bill tucked under the ash tray and dropped five francs onto the table. Once outside the cafe, both men looked at the river. The sculls were gone; only a gray skiff with two fishermen in it was visible on the gray surface of the water. Leo held out a hand. Jack looked down at it and slowly shook his head. "There's no way I'm going to shake your hand, pal. Not now. Not ever."

The two men eyed each other. Leo said softly, "I'm still sorry, Jack. About our friends.h.i.+p. But not about what I did." With that he turned on his heel and stalked off.

His shoes propped up on the desk, one thumb hooked under a striped suspender, Ebby heard Jack out. Then he thought about what he'd said. Then he asked, "You believe him?"

"Yeah, I do."

The DCI needed to be convinced. "To our everlasting grief, he's demonstrated his ability to deceive us," he reminded his deputy.

"I don't see what he'd have to gain," Jack said. "He used to work for the KGB-he still may be carried on their books in some sort of advisory capacity. That's what happened to Philby after he fled to Moscow. So it's hard to see why he'd tell us about a KGB plot to oust Gorbachev unless..."

The green phone on Ebby's desk rang. He raised a palm to apologize for the interruption and, picking it up, listened for a moment. "The answer is no," he said. "If a Soviet Oskar-II sub had sortied from Murmansk into the Barents, we would have picked up its signature on our underwater monitors... No way, Charlie-the Barents is a shallow sea so there'd be no possibility of running deep... Anytime. Bye." Ebby looked up. "Pentagon received a report that a Norwegian fis.h.i.+ng boat saw a submarine snorkel in the Barents yesterday." He picked up the thread of the conversation. "You don't see why Kritzky would tell us about a KGB plot to oust Gorbachev unless what?"

"I racked my brain for possible motives for hours on the plane home," Jack said. "Here's my reading of Leo Kritzky: in part because of his roots, in part because of what happened to his father, in part because of that eternal chip on his shoulder, he was taken in, like a lot of others, by the Utopian rhetoric of Marxism and enlisted in the struggle against capitalism out of a kind of misplaced idealism. His problems began when he reached the Soviet motherland and discovered that it was more of a h.e.l.l-hole than a workers' paradise. You can imagine his disenchantment-all those years on the firing line, all those betrayals, and for what? To support a Stalinist dictators.h.i.+p, even if Stalin was no longer alive, that babbled endlessly about equality and then quietly and quickly silenced anyone who suggested that the king was parading through the streets in ratty underwear."

"So the bottom line is that Kritzky feels guilty. That's what you're saying?"

"He feels betrayed, even if he doesn't put it into so many words. And Gorbachev is the last, best hope that he may have been fighting all his life for something worthwhile after all."

"In other words, Kritzky's telling the truth."

"For sure."

"Could the conspirators have taken him into their confidence-is that how he knows what he knows?"

"Not likely. First off, Leo was a KGB agent but the chances are good that, like Philby before him, he was never a KGB officer, which means he was never an insider."

"And he is a foreigner."

"And he is a foreigner, right. In the back of their minds the KGB people must be haunted by the possibility that he might have been turned."

"Who's feeding Kritzky the information on the conspiracy, then?"

"Search me," Jack said. "We can a.s.sume that it's someone who trusts him with his life."

"All right. We have true information. I take it to George Bush and I say, Mr. President, there's a putsch being hatched against Gorbachev. Here are the names of some of the plotters. Bush was a director of the CIA back in the seventies, so he knows enough not to ask me how we got our hands on this stuff. He knows I wouldn't tell him if he did ask. If he believes it-a big if-the best he can do is to write a letter to Gorbachev. Dear Mikhail, some information fell into my lap that I want to share with you. Blah-blah-blah. Signed, Your friend, George B." Ebby swung his feet to the ground and pushed himself off the swivel seat and came around to settle onto the edge of desk. "See anything else we can do, Jack?"

Jack avoided his friend's eye. "Frankly, I don't, Ebby. Like you always say, we more or less have our hands tied."

Jack checked the little black notebook that he always kept on his person, then pulled the secure phone across the desk and dialed a number. He reached a switchboard that put him through to the clubhouse. The bartender asked him to wait a minute. It turned out to be a long minute, which meant that the Sorcerer had been drinking heavily. When he finally came on the line, his speech was slurred. "Don'tcha know better than to interrupt someone while he's communing with spirits?" he demanded belligerently.

"I'll bet I can give you the brand name of the spirits," Jack retorted.

"Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle! If it isn't the man his-self, Once-down-is-no-battle McAuliffe! What's up, sport? Is the Sorcerer's Apprentice in over his head again? Need the old Sorcerer to pitch you a lifesaver?"

"You got something to write with, Harvey?"

Jack could hear the Sorcerer belch, then ask the bartender for a pen. "Shoot," Torriti bellowed into the phone.

"What are you writing on?"

"The palm of my hand, chum."

Jack gave him the number of his secure line and then had Torriti read it back. Miraculously, he got it the first time.

"Can you get to a pay phone in Santa Fe?"

"Can I get to a pay phone in Santa Fe?"

"Why are you repeating the question, Harvey?"

"Matter of being sure I have it right."

"Okay, drink a thermos of strong coffee, take a cold shower, when you're dead sober find a pay phone and call this number."

"What's in it for yours truly?"

"A break from the drudgery of retirement. A chance to get even."

"Even with who?"

"Even with the bad guys, Harvey, for all the s.h.i.+t they threw at you over the years."

"I'm your man, sport."

"Figured you would be, Harv."

It was already dark out by the time Jack and Millie picked up Jack's car in the underground garage at Langley and drove over (running two red lights) to Doctors Hospital off 20th Street. Anthony, all smiles, was waiting for them in the lobby, a dozen long-stemmed red roses in one hand and a box of cigars in the other. "It's a boy," he blurted out. "Six pounds on the nose. We're arguing about whether to call it Emir after her father or Leon after my...well, my G.o.dfather."

"The baby's not an it," Millie said. "How's Maria?"

"Tired but thrilled," Anthony said, leading them toward the staircase. "Oh G.o.d, she was absolutely fantastic. We did the Lamaze thing until the end. The doctor offered her a spinal but she said no thanks. The baby came out wide awake and took one look at the world and burst into tears. Maybe he was trying to tell us something, huh, Dad?"

"The laughter will come," Jack promised.

Maria, now a network anchorwoman, was sitting up in bed breast-feeding. Millie and Maria tried to figure out which of the baby's features had been inherited from the mother's side of the family and which from the father's. Anthony claimed that the only person the baby resembled was Winston Churchill. Jack, a bit fl.u.s.tered at the sight of a woman openly breast-feeding an infant, made a tactical retreat to the corridor to light up one of his son's cigars. Anthony joined him.

"How are things at your shop?" Jack asked his son.

The State Department, impressed by Anthony's experiences in Afghanistan, had lured him away from the Company three years before to run a hush-hush operation that kept track of Islamic terrorist groups. "The White House is worried sick about Saddam Hussein," he said.

"In my shop we're walking a tightrope on this one," Jack said. "n.o.body quite knows what we're supposed to be doing about Saddam, and we're not getting guidance from State or the White House."

"It figures," Anthony said. "They'd like to get rid of him, but they're afraid that Iraq will break apart without him, leaving the Iranian fundamentalists with a free hand in the region." Anthony looked curiously at his father. "Were you out of town at the beginning of the week, Dad? I tried to call you a few times to tell you about the countdown but your secretary handed me the standard He's away from his desk at the moment He's away from his desk at the moment routine, and you never called back." routine, and you never called back."

"I had to jump to Switzerland to see a guy."

"Uh-huh."

"What does un-huh mean?"

"It means I'm not about to ask any more questions."

Jack had to smile. "I'll answer one of them-but you have to keep it under your hat. Even from Maria. Come to think of it, especially from Maria. The last thing we need is for some journalist to nose around trying to sniff out a story."

Anthony laughed. "I am a tomb. Whatever you tell me goes to the grave with me."

Jack lowered his voice. "I went to Switzerland to meet your G.o.dfather."

Anthony's eyes opened wide. "You saw Leo? Why? Who initiated the meeting? How did you know where to find him? What did he have to say? How is he? What kind of life does he lead?"

"Whoa," Jack said. "Simmer down. I only wanted to tell you that he is alive and more or less well. I know how attached you were to him."

An attendant pus.h.i.+ng a laundry cart came down the hallway. "This here is a no smoking zone," he said. "Whole hospital is, actually. You have to go outside to smoke."

"Oh, sorry," Jack said, and he stubbed out the cigar on the sole of his shoe and then slipped it back into its wrapper so he could smoke it later.

Anthony asked, "How did Leo get out of Russia?"

"Don't know. He could have gone out to Sofia or Prague, say, on his Russian pa.s.sport, and then flown to Switzerland on a phony Western pa.s.sport-they're a dime a dozen in Moscow these days."

"Which means he didn't want the KGB to know he was meeting you."

"You're one jump ahead of me, Anthony."

"In my experience, Dad, whenever I reach someplace interesting, you've already been there."

"Flattery will get you everywhere."

"Are you going to see him again?"

"No."