Eight Miles High

by James Philip

  “Why didn’t you tell the people at Quantico about this?”

  “What makes you think I didn’t, Mister Adams?”

  The two men stared at each other.

  “You think the Piotrowska woman is a Red agent?” Adams asked softly.

  Christie shrugged.

  “Maybe. That or Krasnaya Zarya.”

  “Red Dawn?” Adams did not want to go there. “Why would the British turn her loose if she was Red Dawn?”

  “I didn’t say they’d turned her loose, Mister Adams.”

  The Special Agent held up a hand in apology.

  “No,” he conceded. “But she wasn’t on that aircraft when it landed here on the West Coast?” He had another thought. “Why wouldn’t the Bureau have moved against her if they thought she was a spy back in sixty-one?”

  “It did,” Christie said. “She killed two cops who were part of the snatch team. When she turned up again in 1964 the Brits requested, and the State Department gave her full diplomatic accreditation. The Bureau objected but somebody at the top, probably Tolson or J. Edgar himself, refused to share what was in the files with State.”

  James Adams rose to his feet, unable to keep still.

  He turned his back to Christie, gazed out of the window.

  “What are you telling me, Dwight?” He asked, his tone, his body language speaking to the shock half-paralysing his brain.

  “People at Langley, and close to Hoover, had to have known there was an Angel of Death on their payroll long before ‘Lady Rachel’ showed up again. It was almost worth having the Battle of Washington just to lose Czerniawska, Karen Mathilde’s file, don’t you think? Otherwise, if something went wrong later, how the fuck do you think that old faggot Hoover was going to explain to the American people that the woman he employed to spy on all the good folk at Hanford, was a crazy woman who worked for Red Dawn all along?”

  James Adams stared at the other man as if he was raving, a lunatic writhing inside his strait-jacket, frothing at the mouth and smashing his head against the wall in his raging against the world.

  There had once been a time when he would have discounted what he had just been told as intelligence community mythology, outright misdirection. Literally, the rantings of a madman. The trouble was that in the last few years all the things he had honestly believed that not even a madman could possibly make up, had happened. No matter how implausible it seemed, the disgraced former Special Agent might actually be telling the truth, or leastways, a part of it.

  And that was so far beyond frightening he thought the other man’s madness was in danger of engulfing his mortal soul.

  Chapter 35

  Friday 10th February 1967

  Conference Room, USS United States, San Francisco Bay

  Sir Roy Jenkins, the United Kingdom’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (Designate) had – somewhat reluctantly, because he was not really a morning person – allowed his twenty-nine-year-old Appointments Secretary, the man who was effectively his day-to-day chief of staff, to schedule a breakfast meeting with his new United States counterpart, George Bush.

  This had meant rising at dawn for the irksome car ride through San Francisco, across the Bay Bridge and a thankfully short boat trip, across grey, ominously choppy waters to the conference venue, the USS United States. Given that his lord and master, Tom Harding-Grayson had kept him up half the night; he was not in the best of humours as the US Navy barge came alongside the great liner that dull morning.

  “I apologise if I was a bit testy earlier,” he confessed to his immensely competent, and even after only a few weeks acquaintance, utterly irreplaceable Appointments Secretary.

  “I hardly noticed, Sir Roy,” the younger man smiled.

  Robin Butler was one of Sir Henry Tomlinson’s – the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service’s - protégés. Until last summer he had been the most youthful Permanent Secretary in the land, working with the marvellously ebullient and debonair Minister of Sport, the former England cricket captain Edward ‘Ted’ Dexter. The two men had become the firmest of friends and it had seemed natural, when Dexter announced he planned – with the full support of the Prime Minister - to take a sabbatical from government, and tour with the England XI in South Africa that winter, that Butler should move on to better, greater things.

  Everybody agreed that Butler had done an exemplary job guiding his ‘first minister’ through his relatively stormy tenure at ‘Sport’. Ministers in their first post, regardless of their familiarity or otherwise with their departmental portfolio were, generally speaking, accidents waiting to happen; thus, it paid to keep a very attentive and protective eye on them until they had shown that they were up to the job.

  The other thing everybody agreed was that, even if Ted Dexter had not set houses afire, and hardly been sure-footed, especially in his first year in the job, the successful organisation of the 1966 Soccer World Cup in England had been a triumph of political will, and behind the scenes one of exceptional organisational prowess. Naturally, Dexter had taken most of the public kudos but the Home Civil Service knew exactly who had been the power behind the throne; and recognised a coming man when it saw him!

  Robin Butler, who had joined the Treasury in 1961, was that most ‘civil’ of civil servants – the unflappable, effortlessly competent, chivalric product of Harrow School, where it went without saying he had been Head Boy, and a graduate of University College, Oxford where he had achieved a double first and in his spare time twice won a Rugby Blue – had leapt at the chance to work with, and for Dexter.

  Roy Jenkins did not need to be told – although he had in fact, been ‘told’ several times – how lucky he was to have been sent a rising star like Butler, and flying in the face of his fears, the two men had, after a hesitant beginning, struck it off in recent weeks. It helped no end that Robin Butler had a knack of getting on famously with practically everybody, even, improbably with the hard cases at the State Department who tended to treat Henry Cabot Lodge as if he was a man constantly pursued by assassins, whom nobody could approach or converse with other than after a positively Ruritanian rigmarole.

  “What do we think is going on, Robin?” Jenkins asked his young colleague.

  “I strongly suspect that there is simmering discord in the American camp, Sir Roy.”

  To say that Secretary Lodge had been ‘off his game’ throughout the interminable bilateral and multilateral meetings on board the liner in the last few days, would be an understatement of monumental proportions. The poor fellow had looked like somebody was walking, and now and then, jumping up and down on his own grave most of the time, and as for the rest of the ‘Nixon gang’ – as the West Coast newspapers were calling the inner circle of the Administration – they had been noticeable only for their absence. Apparently, the President and his advisors – Henry Cabot Lodge apart – were securely locked away in their Californian White House up in the Claremont Hills.

  The US Secretary of State was waiting to greet his British visitors, flanked by a tall, lean familiar-looking man whom neither Englishman could have put a name to only forty-eight hours ago.

  Forty-two-year-old George Herbert Walker Bush, Massachusetts-born but a man who nowadays combined New England poise with easy, sincere, Texan charm, smiled as hands were shaken.

  Henry Cabot Lodge made no attempt to elaborate on why the younger man was standing next to him on the deck of the USS United States, jointly welcoming the representative of his country’s most important foreign ally, was at his side.

  Neither Jenkins or Butler thought this was amiss; important matters were not to be discussed on the promenade deck of an ocean liner!

  George Bush fell into step with Robin Butler as the group followed a US Navy officer deep into the heart of the great ship, wondering how ‘the Brits’ were going to respond to the Secretary of State’s news and his own, suddenly, literally out of the blue, injection into the mix.

  However, it was not as if his life to date had
not hardened him in preparation for the trials to come. He came from a banking family imbued with Republican politics; his father had sat in the Senate, representing Connecticut since 1952, bar a two-year period after unsuccessfully attempting to reverse his decision to stand down in 1962 in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Missiles War, a thing put right in 1964.

  Although not himself such a high-profile personality in GOP circles as his Senator father, Bush was a well-known – if only infrequently spotted – DC figure, not least because he was an honest to God American hero.

  Back in 1942 he had volunteered for flight training with the US Navy as soon as he graduated, aged eighteen, from the Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts. Commissioned an ensign in June 1943, at the time one of the youngest fliers in the Navy, and assigned to Torpedo Squadron 51 (VT-51) piloting Grumman TBM Avengers, and flying off the USS San Jacinto he had fought in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Not long after that, attacking shore targets in the Bonin Islands he had been shot down, bailed out and spent several hours bobbing up and down in a small inflatable life raft – while US fighters circled overhead – wondering when the sharks, or the Japanese would get him, before being taken on board the submarine USS Finback.

  He later discovered that scuttlebutt had it that the other men shot down on the raid, who had fallen into enemy hands had been executed, and their livers eaten by the Japanese. Understandably, when after a month, the Finback was able to return him to the surface navy, Bush was a man touched if not by revelation, then changed indelibly, with a conviction that God had saved him for some special, as yet unarticulated purpose.

  After re-joining the San Jacinto, he had completed no less than fifty-eight combat missions, earned a Distinguished Flying Cross, a clutch of Air Medals and a little piece of the Presidential Citation awarded to his ship. Bush had married in 1945, gone to Yale where he had graduated in two-and-a-half years, been elected president of the Delta Kappa fraternity, captained the University baseball team and met Babe Ruth.

  He had gone into the oil industry after Yale, becoming a millionaire by the end of the 1950s, which was about when, everybody assumed, he had got into bed with the CIA…

  Of course, that was not the way he saw it.

  George Bush had damned nearly got himself killed a dozen times as a young man in the Pacific; since then he had made his fortune, secured a sound foundation for his family – he and his wife, Barbara, had a brood of six children – and now he was returning to public service. He had been lucky in life and it was high time to pay his dues.

  Having never resigned from the Navy Reserve, he had applied for active service within days of the October War, serving on the Operations Staff of the Seventh Fleet at San Diego and later in Honolulu in 1964 and 1965. Thereafter he had split his time between his business interests, GOP campaigning ahead of last year’s mid-terms, and ‘running errands’ for the State Department, mostly in Latin America where he had formed a number of potentially significant relationships with political and military leaders.

  The four men were suddenly shut up, alone, in a relatively Spartan compartment without portholes somewhere two or three decks down in the bowels of the monster.

  “This is,” Roy Jenkins began to remark, adjusting his horn-rimmed spectacles, ‘cosy…’

  “I apologise,” Henry Cabot Lodge said quickly. “This is highly irregular, I know.” He grimaced distastefully. “I must inform you that Doctor Kissinger and several members of the State Department mission in California, have resigned their posts overnight.”

  Neither Roy Jenkins or Robin Butler thought it appropriate to offer a comment on this, remaining determinedly silent. It was intolerably bad form to intrude upon another man’s grief.

  “Gordon Gray will be assuming the role of acting US National Security Advisor. Captain Bush,” he nodded to his younger companion, “will henceforth, act as our Ambassador to the United Nations. Obviously, in the circumstances, you will understand that when I say ‘acting’ this merely reflects the urgency with which these, and several other appointments have been made to ensure the continuity of the good governance of the Union.”

  Roy Jenkins took off his glasses and extended his hand to Bush.

  “Let me extend to you the heartiest congratulations of Her Majesty’s Government, Mr Bush…”

  “George,” the other man said, smiling as hands were shaken. “Just call me George.”

  Chapter 36

  Friday 10th February 1967

  Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland

  James Jesus Angleton had looked as if he had not slept for several days. He was visibly dishevelled and Caroline smelled stale alcohol on his breath.

  Frankly, she did not have a lot of sympathy for him: in her humble opinion he was every bit as bad, if not much a worse monster, than the man who had submitted Clara Schouten to such a prolonged, sadistically bestial calculated ordeal.

  At least Kurt Mikkelsen had looked his victim in the eye, not hidden for years behind the fig leaf of so-called national security, and duty. Both men were bad men, Angleton was, in her opinion just as sick as Billy the Kid. What kind of self-obsessed coward neglected to tell a long-time, loyal servant of his department that she was in clear and present danger and, apparently, so as not to make her suspicious or overly anxious, not bothered to put any arrangements in place to keep her safe?

  Several years ago, Caro had refused to participate in CIA-sponsored mind-control experiments, involving the use of psychotropic and other ‘truth’ and ‘mind-altering’ drugs, electing to concentrate on her profiling work with the FBI. In truth, working for the Bureau she had had to hold her moral nose to carry on at times. Right now, she was beginning to feel as spiritually violated as poor Clara Schouten had been physically and emotionally tormented by Kurt Mikkelsen, the CIA’s creation and creature.

  Caro was spitting mad: that she had once admired Richard Nixon’s steadfastness and resolution, and applauded him for his courage in taking upon himself the responsibility for the war in the Midwest, and thereafter in her country’s darkest hour tried to serve him selflessly, with her whole heart regardless of the cost to her professionally, and potentially in huge peril for her life, now made her want to puke.

  How could she have been so fucking gullible?

  She had been duped, taken for a fool.

  Now, she would forever be associated in the public mind with a bunch of creeps and criminals. To think that she had once been seduced by the glamour and the kudos of working for the President, entranced like a stupid schoolgirl by her induction into the Commander-in-Chief’s inner circle!

  How could she have been so fucking stupid?

  Learning that Operation Maelstrom, in the guise of a humbler abomination called Operation Chaos had its origins in 1959; when Nixon was the man Eisenhower was sending around the globe – because Ike was a whole lot happier on the golf course than in the Oval Office by then – bad-mouthing all those foul Marxist-Leninist ‘dictatorships’ who spied and unjustly subjugated their own people.

  What a fucking hypocrite?

  Well, she was through with the Administration.

  And after today, she was through with the CIA, too!

  She had no idea why James Angleton had wanted her to talk to Clara Schouten; the woman was in a mess, which was understandable but she was coherent, lucid. Yes, she would benefit from counselling, and she would need her friends to rally around. Presently, the horror of it all had not really sunk in; understandably, she was just relieved, happy to be alive.

  What she did not need was an academic physician who would probably never see her again, attempting to deconstruct a psychosis which might never manifest itself if she was only given half-a-chance to get on with things, without constant reminders of the worst three days of her life. The saddest thing was that Caro strongly suspected the most destructive aspect of the whole awful business would, in time be, the certain knowledge that the man she had worked for, pretty much worshi
pped and held in awe with a mixture of platonic infatuation and unlikely girlish innocence, had so coldly, callously betrayed her.

  James Angleton had reacted very badly when Caro told him exactly what she thought of him.

  The spineless little shit!

  ‘You violated that poor woman every bit as inhumanly as Kurt Mikkelsen; he’s a fucking psychopath! What’s your excuse?’

  It was not perhaps, the sort of language one would find in a medical text book; however, apt and appropriate it had been in the circumstances.

  Caro had lost her temper and said a lot of other things to the alleged ‘great spymaster’. People like the Associate Deputy Director of Central Intelligence – it was no real comfort to know that he would not be that much longer – were contemptible.

  When Nixon and all his men got back from California, Caro knew, she just knew, they were going to scapegoat Angleton, and pretend Operation Maelstrom was just a wartime expedient that was temporarily extended to complete the compilation of evidence for the forthcoming War Crimes Tribunal proceedings in Minneapolis. The White House would blame ‘bad actors’, Communists, journalists, political activists, the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement; in short, all the people they had been spying on and gratuitously denying their constitutional rights!

  She refused the offer of a car to take her back to the first-floor CIA apartment in Georgetown that she had been allocated. She planned to pack her clothes and book into a hotel. Working for these people was no better than accepting blood money, thirty pieces of silver...

  It took several minutes to flag a cab outside the gates of the complex; and she was still seething as she stomped up the steps to her soon to be vacated front door and turned the key in the lock.