by Paul Vidich
When things started going wrong they went very wrong. He was caught unprepared. It didn’t happen all at once, though. Disappointment came in the slow accretion of small setbacks and his sense of powerlessness grew along the way. In ’48 he was newly married, a father, stationed in the occupied city of Vienna running paramilitary operations from a cramped, unheated office across the Second Bezirk, the Russian zone, where the old Vienna with its prancing statues lay crumbling and desolate with burned-out tanks pushed to the side of the Danube. The girl he’d married worked in the office and their long hours together led to a romance. She was on the team that recruited disenchanted citizens of Soviet satellites for the Allies and organized them to be air dropped into the Carpathian Mountains, or inserted by fast boat on the Albanian coast under cover of darkness. Johana was just twenty-two when she joined the team working as a translator. She was beautiful, in a most Austrian way, with alabaster skin, wavy chestnut hair, and large brown eyes. She had all the English she needed with her wartime education in London, and on returning to her hometown she’d been deemed suitable for a job with the Americans, where she was in the thick of things. Their child wasn’t planned.
They watched in dismay as missions failed. A few radio transmitters were turned on by teams inserted behind the Iron Curtain, but in most cases there was only radio silence. Ambushed. Coordinates were known to the Soviets in advance. No one wanted to admit the obvious. The Soviets had penetrated the Agency. Someone inside had provided the Soviets with drop points, and then later, the names of CIA assets. Mueller saw the pattern in Vienna and continued to see it when he was brought back to agency headquarters in Quarter’s Eye. Men disappeared, networks rolled up. One by one CIA assets were compromised in Vienna, Berlin, and now there was Alfred Leisz. He hadn’t been somewhere in Europe. Leisz had been right there in Washington managing the listening post in the basement of the public library near the Soviet embassy.
Traitor was a word that never appeared in memos; it was unsaid in meetings. But it was whispered at Friday-afternoon vespers when Scotch whiskey released the week’s tension among case officers who worked in Quarter’s Eye. Mueller too had been reluctant to use the word because it implied a betrayal of unthinkable proportions. Someone in the close group of colleagues was working for the other side. One of them had turned to the Soviet Union. Mueller knew trust was the basis of their work and he had become guarded in his conversations, cautious in what he said, and matters he once openly discussed he avoided, or simply shut down. Mueller found himself among his colleagues with their Scotch whiskeys knowing they were thinking: Is he? Was he? Could he?
Everyone privately worried about a Soviet agent in their midst. They worried about other things too, but those anxieties were openly discussed. A great emphasis, by way of defense, was placed upon loud opinions against communism, against homosexuality, against atheism. And this was matched by great enthusiasm for the activities in their lives, the quail hunting, fly-fishing, tennis, drinking. But not discussed, not among themselves or with their wives, who often were in the dark about what their husbands did, or even who their employer was, were their private suspicions about colleagues. Caution depleted camaraderie.
• • •
The call to meet the director came early in the morning. Dense fog rolled in from the cold Potomac and low visibility in the back of the taxi deepened Mueller’s gloomy mood. It reminded him of winter in Vienna. Dampness that penetrated the soul.
Mueller was just shy of six feet, and on the thin side, which made him appear lanky, and he slumped in the backseat. His face was slightly oval, hair parted on the left, and combed straight back, and he wore clear plastic eyeglass that made him look inconspicuous, a man who could sit in a restaurant and not catch a waiter’s eye.
He dressed practically, in gabardine suits that held their form one day to the next and let him keep his trips to the cleaners to a minimum. He used a simple knot for his necktie because it was fast, easy to tie, and quick to remove, and it matched the narrow-spread collar he preferred. His leather shoes needed a shine and their soles were wearing thin, but since his divorce he hadn’t found a comfortable rhythm to his personal life.
He had long, delicate fingers with nails that almost looked manicured. His were not hands that could strangle a man. They lacked the strength for that. The grip of a tennis racket had helped, but tennis was the sport he took up only when he wasn’t near a boathouse with sculls to put in the river. They were the hands of a man with a desk job, hands of a thinker. A callus on his finger came from after-action reports he wrote in a cramped style with fountain pen. No one would look at Mueller and think he was the type to pick a fight in a bar.
“On the right,” Mueller said. He leaned forward to the driver and cocked his head at an angle that was always the same degree off center when he took an interest in the person he was addressing. “Drop me there at the guardhouse.”
Mueller flashed his badge to the military policeman at the locked gate, near the sign that identified the redbrick building as the United States Government Printing Office. It was a silly holdover from the Agency’s early days, and taxi drivers weren’t fooled; even tour bus guides took pleasure in pointing out what really went on inside the three-story Federal-style building. Who were they kidding? To Mueller the printing office sign fit into the larger pattern of being out of touch, the Agency believing the myths about itself.
Mueller was shown into the corner office by Rose, the director’s longtime secretary, who put Mueller on a leather sofa that anchored a sitting arrangement at one end of the room, across from a ponderous wood desk. There was no clutter of paper, only stacked file folders, and the director was absorbed in reading a letter. A cold draft filled the room, carrying with it the musty odor of a stodgy Ivy League club. Mounted antelope and mountain lion heads hung on one wall above a shelf of stuffed game birds, and an antique double-barrel shotgun was cocked open on the coffee table by the sofa. Everywhere were framed photos of the director with smiling dignitaries and elegant women. Mueller knew it was unusual to be in the director’s office. An invitation meant a rare commendation or a private dressing down. One never knew which.
“You hunt?” the director said, crossing the room letter in hand.
“Quail.”
“Good man. We should go one day. I know a spot on the bay. Before the season opens.”
The director sat opposite Mueller in a high-backed wing chair covered in chintz and tatted antimacassars on the arms. He wore a crimson house robe open at the neck to show necktie, and tan slippers adorned at the toes with floppy dog ears. His hair was thinning, gray, eyes a keen blue, cheeks flush with drinker’s weight, and his snaggletooth bit on a pipe, which he removed and tapped on an ash tray, and said, almost to himself as much as to Mueller, “You have to have a few martyrs. Some people have to get killed. It’s part of this business. I wouldn’t worry about Leisz. He knew what he was getting into when he signed up with us.”
He waved his hand in the air at nothing, like the pope. “He’s not on my conscience. None of them are. We are not in the conscience business. The Soviets don’t play the game that way.”
The director added fresh tobacco to his pipe and applied a match, drawing air to brighten the coals. He looked over his rimless spectacles perched on the end of his thick nose. “I need you to see this through to the end.” He drew on the pipe, releasing quick puffs. Hints of licorice reached Mueller.
“Take some time off if you need to see your son. If you think it’s important. I believe in letting the mind rest so it doesn’t fight against the will. . . . This is a grubby business we’re in. Someday we’ll both get back to the classroom, you and I. It’s that fondness for thinking that makes us good at what we do here. The professor finds satisfaction in sorting through details and he feels superior when he passes along knowledge. The spy is the same. The daily grind, the mounds of information, the hours of boredom poking around the mounds
of information, punctuated by ecstatic moments of discovery. Good researchers hold no beliefs, make no judgments. Evidence declares itself. Am I lecturing too much?”
Mueller shook his head.
“Kind of you, George, but I know when I’m going on. People sit on that sofa and say nothing because I’m the man in charge, but sometimes I see they’re bored. I saw it with my students. Well, to finish the thought. We use intelligence to solve problems and when we look at evidence against our colleagues, our friends, we need to be rigorous and neutral, so our feelings about the men don’t corrupt our judgment. Yes?”
The director rose. He stretched with a grimace. “Gout is a terrible thing. Awful. I don’t know what I did in my past life to deserve this disease.” He bent over his thick girth and sent his outstretched fingers toward his slipper’s toes. His face flushed purple and he let out a great heave of effort. “I’m not embarrassing you, am I? Sitting cuts the circulation. I need to move around to get the blood flowing.”
The director walked to his desk and lifted a bronze statuette replica of the Nathan Hale statue at Yale. “He was the first American spy. His last quoted words are often misquoted. He didn’t say ‘I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.’ He said ‘I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.’ It’s an important distinction. Lose or give. The distinction between the passive and active verbs is the difference between a patriotic spy, the role history has given Nathan Hale, and a man arrested in the course of a poorly planned mission who was hanged when he got caught. We want to believe in honor and sacrifice, and when it doesn’t exist we invent it.”
The director returned to his chair. “Look,” he said, sitting, “do you wonder why I asked you here?”
“Yes.”
“I saw your report on the incident at Lincoln Park the other night. You didn’t mention the reporter’s name. I assume he was from the Star. That’s who the FBI is close to, and the Republicans in the Senate. They would like nothing more than to publicly embarrass us. You read the papers. I don’t have to spell it out. They’ve made the State Department into a goddamn haven for effeminate intellectuals. Sonofabitch. There is a madness in this country. I can’t bear the name calling, the outbursts of hatred and vilification, the repulsive spectacle of red baiting, and the way good men’s reputations are tarnished with innuendo.” The director looked hard at Mueller. “They are jealous of our mission here and they don’t like that I can call up the White House and get the president on the phone.”
The director struck a match that he held over the pipe’s bowl and drew air to brighten the coals. His fingers were stubby and thick. “Were you disappointed the other night?” the director said, looking up.
“At what?” Mueller asked. “That he wasn’t caught?”
“Yes.”
“And read about it in the press? No, I was not disappointed.”
“A cure worse than the disease. Very messy. Is Protocol alerted?”
Mueller paused. “I suspect he is. We can’t know. The money was there. He might have seen the whole thing from a doorway.”
“Unfortunate. He’ll be coy now.”
“He’ll go dormant. A week. A month. We got close this time. Very close.”
“What about you?” the director asked.
“I’m not ready to stick around for another six months. That wasn’t my deal. I’ve applied for a teaching position in the fall. I need time with my son.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” the director huffed. “The deal we had. I know. I know. But I can’t afford to lose you right now.” He slapped a letter on the coffee table. “It’s from the senator. He wants me to answer questions in front of his committee. He wraps himself in his sanctimonious anticommunist rhetoric so the rest of us look weak. He is a drunk, but a dangerous drunk.”
The director slumped in his high-backed chair. “That reporter bothers me. They are raising the stakes for us.”
It didn’t have to be said. They both knew. The head of the FBI resented the newly chartered CIA for taking over foreign intelligence gathering and the FBI had no qualms about using the same tactics against the Agency that it used against corrupt politicians and the mob. Gather dirt and spread it.
“They’d like nothing more than to have a headline that provoked the senator to conduct a witch hunt here.” The director leaned forward. “We can’t wait for Protocol’s next move. We need to accelerate this. Take the initiative while we can.”
Mueller looked at the director, but said nothing.
“Walker’s team can’t know. The FBI can’t know,” the director said. “Do you understand?”
“There’s a risk. It’s our job to work together.”
“They haven’t been good partners on this. Frankly, I don’t trust them. We will bend the rules a bit, quietly of course. Are you up for it?”
“It?”
“Altman will fill you in. It’s his idea. Let me know what you think. I have my doubts. About the idea. About him.” He looked at Mueller. “Same class?”
“He was a year ahead. Same college. Davenport.”
“So you’re friends?”
“Acquaintances.”
“Good man?”
“We were in Vienna together after the war. Before that he was in Berlin.” Mueller stopped himself from elaborating. There was no need to recite his personal history with Roger Altman. The director had their files if he wanted to know the background. He suspected the director had already done that, reviewed their dossiers for that was his job, the men who worked for him, knowing who had which skill, which weakness, and which man was right for the job. “I can vouch for him,” Mueller said.
“One more thing,” the director said. “Leisz. Any more ideas on that?”
“He knew the man. There was no forced entry. His machine uses one-hour tapes and the reel was still running when I found him.”
“Strangled?”
“Piano wire.”
“Poor bastard.” The director dismissed Mueller with a hand wave. “Look after the wife. Make the usual financial arrangements. We don’t want her asking questions.”
The meeting ended.
There was no such thing as a typical meeting with the director, but this meeting, unlike others he’d been in, which began with a long-winded preamble that was part anecdote, part lore, part lecture, part pep talk, was different in the director’s concerned tone, and different too because he had put the director on notice that he had acted on his desire to leave the Agency.
• • •
That afternoon, Mueller was surprised to find three men seated in the cramped conference room on the second floor of Quarter’s Eye. Mueller expected to find Roger Altman, because that was who the director had asked him to see, but he also saw David Downes, Operations, a short man, insecure and indiscreet, with a stutter that he overcame with deliberate speech, and James Coffin, Counterintelligence. Coffin had been in London during the war assigned to X2, which he coordinated with his British MI6 counterparts, and in his three years there he’d become a bit of an Anglophile. It came out when he spoke, for he used the British “we” in place of the American “I,” and his penchant for secrecy was mistaken by his British friends as polite reserve. His conservative dark suits were bespoke from a shop on Oxford Street and he drove a drafty English sports car wholly unsuited to Washington’s weather extremes. Together the four men formed what they called among themselves the Council.
Mueller took the seat he usually occupied in their weekly meeting on Protocol. There was no rhyme or reason to code names. They were picked in sequence from a sterile list and care was taken to select words that had no meaning.
Mueller nodded at one man, then the others. They were side by side, same drawn expression, same reticence while Mueller settled into his seat. Something had been decided.
“Bad outcome the other night,” Coffin said.
His shoulders still had the broad lines of someone who’d crewed in college, but the rest of him had gone thin from years of cigarettes and bad scotch.
“It could have been worse,” Mueller said. He had confused them. “Walker had a reporter there.”
“Jesus.” This came from Altman, who snuffed his cigarette in an ash tray. The unventilated room was rank with mildew and tobacco.
So they’d been there a while, Mueller thought. There followed spirited debate about the FBI. Coffin called them insular and untrustworthy. Coffin had a beaked nose, black hair swept back from his pale forehead, hornrim glasses that dominated his angular face and concentrated the expression in his eyes.
“They really don’t like us, do they?” Coffin said calmly, almost sarcastically.
“They resent us,” Mueller said. “They resent that we’re not working for them.”
“How close was it?” Altman asked.
“They found the dead drop. The money was there.”
“Just money?” Altman asked.
“Used currency. Nothing to trace. Twenties. What else do you need?”
Coffin tapped ash from his cigarette. “How did they know it was there?”
“A tail. Chernov’s wife. The Russians made a mistake. They didn’t expect the FBI to follow her.” Mueller’s eyes turned from the winter view outside the window and looked at the three men across the table. “Walker blew it. Protocol was on his way.”
“Scared off?”
“He was there. Saw the whole carnival. There were witnesses.” Mueller looked directly at Altman. Mueller had been recruited by Altman. There was that obligation. Friendly but not friends. Altman had a handsome face, the same slender figure of their undergraduate days, and he dressed impeccably in double-breasted blue blazer with the flourish of a crimson pocket square.
“What’s next?” Mueller asked Altman. “The director said you had an idea.”
