by Paul Vidich
Vasilenko smiled, drummed his fingers, and looked directly at Mueller. “Our shelves are empty sometimes, yes, but what does all this materialism get you? Huh. At least we can laugh at ourselves, which is more than I can say about you. Here’s a joke. A man walks into a food store and asks, ‘Do you have any meat?’ ‘No we don’t.’ ‘What about milk?’ ‘We don’t sell milk. Across the street is the store where they have no milk.’”
Mueller smiled.
“So you like that I make fun of what you think of us. Here is another one. A judge walks out of a courtroom laughing loudly. A colleague asks, ‘What’s so funny?’ The judge says, wiping tears of laugher, ‘Ah, I just heard an excellent joke.’ ‘A joke. Tell me.’ ‘Are you crazy?’ the judge says. ‘I just sentenced a man ten years for that joke.’”
Vasilenko laughed. “You are bound by the rules of civilization. We don’t have that problem. That’s why we will win.” Vasilenko ate the last olive in his empty glass. “We know who our enemies are. I don’t think you can say the same thing.” He nodded at the FBI agent at the bar. A second man had joined him. “They follow both of us.”
A waiter gently set down a fresh martini and Vasilenko leaned forward to sip the overflowing glass. “Let me know what I can do for you, my friend. We owe you a favor.”
“You still hunt quail?”
“Of course.”
“I know someone with private land. We should go. Will they let you out?”
Vasilenko smiled. “A weekend perhaps.”
Mueller reached under the table for a long black leather case he’d carried into the bar. Opening it he displayed a magnificent Winchester shotgun.
“What’s this?”
“You admired mine in Vienna. Remember, in Baden by the bombed monastery? The cold day.” Mueller presented the gun. “I thought you’d like it. It will help international relations and improve your aim.”
Vasilenko left the gun in Mueller’s hands. His smile vanished and a dark shadow clouded his face. He looked tolerantly at Mueller. “Are you trying to get me sent back to Moscow? I would love this, of course. But how would this look to the rezident? I appreciate your effort to put me at risk.”
He stood abruptly. He shoved one arm in his bulky overcoat. Before leaving he looked at Mueller. “If you want to meet from time to time to be friendly, that’s fine. We have many interesting things in common. A lot to talk about. But let’s not play silly games.”
“Sit down,” Mueller said. He patted the seat. “Let’s finish our drinks.”
Vasilenko frowned, but then removed his coat and slumped against the back of the booth. Mueller took a salted peanut from the bowl and popped it in his mouth. He pushed the bowl at Vasilenko, who grabbed a handful.
“How is the leg?” Vasilenko asked.
“Stitches are out.”
“The driver swore he was on his side of the road. He didn’t know you were hurt until the police came to the compound. It was an embarrassment he didn’t have a license. We respect your laws.”
Mueller nodded. “What have they got you doing?”
Surprise. “Me? The usual. Trade mission. A few conferences. I focus on high-temperature alloys.”
“How’s Chernov?”
Vasilenko shrugged. “Same as he was in Vienna. He has a job to do and now he has supporters in Moscow. That gives him privileges. Some power.”
“Colleagues, or do you work for him?”
Vasilenko smiled. “Don’t press your luck, my friend.” Vasilenko finished his martini and slid the empty glass to the middle of the table. He nodded at Mueller’s hardly touched beer. “Not drinking?”
Mueller took the beer in one long draft. His stomach was in revolt. He put ten dollars on the table. “On me.”
They met again the next week, and then again the week after that. Each time it was at the Whiskey Bar in the Carlton Hotel at the end of the workday, and each time Vasilenko appeared mysteriously out of nowhere. The Russian drank heavily and Mueller abstemiously. Mueller brought technical journal articles on bioweapons to give Vasilenko something to take back to the embassy. The articles were publicly available if you knew where to look, so they were of modest intelligence value, but the information provided cover for their meetings.
“This,” Mueller said, putting a shopping bag at Vasilenko’s feet when he slipped into the booth, “is the May 1947 Journal of Immunology you asked about. It reads like science fiction. Aerosol bomblets dropped from helium balloons that are designed to spread bacteria clouds over cities. We find clever new ways to annihilate each other.”
It was a sunny day, late afternoon, but Vasilenko was gloomy and he ignored the comment and the shopping bag. The Russian ordered a second drink and sipped when the waiter served it.
Mueller watched Vasilenko, said nothing.
“My son is a good athlete. Good student. He has set his mind on this high school. Perhaps you have heard of it. Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School. It’s the most prestigious engineering school in Moscow. Already he has ideas about better-performing machines, devices for mathematical calculations. His future is good if he gets in.”
Vasilenko lit a cigarette and drew on it deeply. His face was flushed from alcohol and his fingers impatiently drummed the table. Vasilenko looked at Mueller without pity. “We are different, you and I, but our countries share one thing. Corruption.” He spat the word like a poison.
Mueller sensed his companion’s agitation and he was alert to the man’s confessional tone.
“He’s a good student. His mother pushes him. He passed the entrance exam, which few do. It’s university level. They take fifteen boys, but there are more suitable candidates than slots—so they must choose.”
“Who chooses?”
“Well, that is the point.” Vasilenko clenched and unclenched his fist, and then clenched it again, knuckles turning white. “Party members review the candidates and make the choice. So you need to know who can help. There is one party member, my wife’s uncle, who knows one man on the admissions committee. He can help, but it will be expensive.”
Vasilenko looked at Mueller. “You have a son. You understand. If you were me with a talented boy who has set his mind on this future . . . what would you do? How far would you go?”
Mueller watched Vasilenko draw deeply on his cigarette. Mueller felt this was one of those moments in life that seemed like a cruel joke, but it was hard to find the humor, or discern the wit, if you suspected, as he did, that the joke was on the man sitting opposite. A quiet pool. The right lure. “I have a friend who can help.”
“A friend?”
“It can be arranged.”
Vasilenko looked skeptically at Mueller. “I don’t think so. Stalin was a disgrace, but Marxist Leninism is inevitable.” He said this without irony. His foot tapped the documents under the table. “Keep your shopping bag full of shit.”
• • •
Rain broke hard and steady—exceedingly hard and steady—while Mueller stood alone in the empty third-floor conference room in Quarter’s Eye. The downpour had let loose all at once, and daylight turned swampy green. A low rumble of violent rain pounded the lawn and the parking lot. The conference room darkened and he stepped up to the window’s view of the storm, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was 5:00 p.m. There was only rain and the promise of more rain—the cold rain of winter.
The agreed time of the Council meeting had passed and Mueller was still the only one in the room. He hated to wait, or to be made to wait. He fingered a No. 2 yellow pencil, rolling it across his knuckles, a silly trick he’d perfected at a drunken freshman party at Yale. The wind had picked up and he had an anxious flutter of excitement that the blowing storm would snap a branch or flood the street. There was no room to worry about himself. All this—the scope of the storm, the absence of sun, the tremendous noise, and the suddenness
of it all—made an impression on him. He was aware in the weird way that strange occurrences trigger unsettling thoughts that he had already lived half his life and had nothing good to show for it. He couldn’t even tell a stranger what he did for a living. Secrets consumed him. The sense of mission that had drawn him to the work was long gone—corrupted—along with his naïve, younger self.
He saw a young woman out in the storm hurrying to cross the lawn. Her umbrella bent under the pounding rain. She moved urgently, leaning into the wind, running through puddles. He thought of Beth. Where was she right now?
“George?”
Mueller turned. Altman stood patiently in the open door and it was obvious he’d been there watching Mueller for several moments.
“You look lost in thought. Where is everyone? Just you and me? We’ll have to do this by ourselves.”
Instant Enthusiast. Coffin’s glib observation about Altman had been funny when he heard it because it was just slightly true, and the label crystalized an impression he’d had about Altman that he’d never been able to put into words. The new label settled in like a stubborn grievance.
The other members of the Council arrived shortly, first Coffin, in tuxedo for an evening gala, purposeful with a dossier clamped to his chest; and Downes, smug and heavy, like a bulldog. They joined Altman, whose jaunty mood defied the weather, and the three men settled at the table opposite Mueller. He felt the outsider again. The meeting started at once. Coffin gave an update on the Leisz matter, which was hardly an update at all, for there was no information on the burglary, but he threw out the news the FBI were involved. Apparently the Hungarian embassy took the children and asked some questions.
“Should we be worried?” asked Coffin.
Mueller could practically hear the cogs of his colleagues’ minds whirring. The question was simple enough, but the answer was braided in a complex tapestry of cover stories. Mueller gave thought to a flaw in the fabric and said something vague.
“That’s all you can come up with? ‘Time will tell.’ I don’t need to know that. That’s quite obvious.” Coffin opened his dossier. He looked up, addressing Mueller again in a rising tenor voice. “So, if it’s not money Vasilenko will take then we need to try something else.” Gloom on his face reflected the long hours he’d pondered their dilemma.
“My report doesn’t rule out money,” Mueller said, “but he would have to be desperate. He is a hard-line Communist. Believes in the system. Greed doesn’t motivate him.”
“Everyone has a price,” Downes snapped.
Mueller stared. “You’re frustrated. I’m frustrated. I don’t want this to go on. If I thought money would turn him I’d say give him what he wants. It’s not money. He can’t spend money without attracting attention.”
“There is something, I’m sure,” Coffin said. “There always is. Any suggestions?” He looked at Downes, smug face slightly dyspeptic, and at Altman, who leaned toward Mueller, probing.
“How is his relationship with Chernov?”
“Tolerable. We didn’t get into it. He steered the conversation away.”
“Competitive?”
Coffin answered. “We believe that Beria is making a play. As you know, from what’s come to us since Stalin died, GRU doesn’t like the power NKVD is taking. Long knives are out. It’s King Lear. Vasilenko, the earnest hard-liner he is, can’t be happy.”
Mueller snapped, “That’s not enough. His family is in Moscow. He won’t put them at risk. Not for that.”
There was a beat of silence.
“George, calm down.” Altman closed his manila file and solemnly folded his hands.
Mueller stared at Altman. “What?”
“How long has his wife been in Moscow?”
“Six months. With the son.”
“What does Vasilenko do for companionship?”
“He goes to Moscow Center a few times a year and visits his wife.” Mueller added, “We haven’t found a girlfriend.”
“He drinks?”
“No more than the usual.” He looked at the men around the table. “No more than anyone here.”
Coffin allowed himself to be slightly amused.
“I think we should try it,” Altman said. “This doesn’t have to go through Operations. They’d have to clear it through FBI Liaison. David can arrange it.”
“Freelance.”
“We have the authority. Let’s not get bogged down in stupid bureaucratic formalities. The stakes, gentlemen, are too high. We have an asset in place. She is a maid who was cleared by their security and she cleans apartments for several of the Soviet embassy staff. She speaks Russian. A good case officer. She cleans Vasilenko’s apartment. We’ve spent a year putting her in place waiting for the right job.”
Mueller watched Downes remove a file from his briefcase. He laid out the details of what they would now call the dangle. Date. Time. Safe house location.
• • •
A fine, misting rain fell through the fog as Mueller darted across L Street toward a gray, sooty apartment building with a mansard brow and ugly fire escape. More rain. When would it end? Car headlights suddenly appeared out of nowhere and drove toward him. Mueller’s only choice was to jump out of the way. It sped by, splashing him. The darkness, the fog, the car’s reckless speed, all made it impossible to see who was behind the wheel.
He pulled his hat down on his forehead and stepped into the cover of the first doorway. He waited a few minutes just to be sure. He looked but saw no one. The car had been its own freak thing. That was the conclusion he came to. He left the overhang and continued on, walking quickly, but not so quickly that he would attract the wrong kind of attention. His clipped footsteps echoed without provenance.
He buzzed the apartment once. He held a key but he didn’t want to arrive unannounced, startling her. On the third floor he approached the farthest door and used the agreed-upon three knocks.
“I brought you coffee,” he said, when he was inside. He handed her a lidded paper container. “You alone?”
He looked around the tiny apartment. Little had changed since the time when they’d brought up the Bulgarian. There was a lace negligee draped over a chair as there had been the last time, but someone had made sure the glossy fan magazines on the coffee table fit her cover of aspiring actress making money on the side cleaning apartments—Photoplay, Modern Screen, Movie Life. Tolerably neat, he thought, but charmless—some man’s idea of a single woman’s apartment. Shades drawn. A few romance novels. Chairs you’d find in a budget hotel. Gold frame mirror picked up at a flea market. He saw nothing that stood out, or drew attention to itself, that would compromise the job.
“Who sent you?” she asked.
“I’m the handler on this.”
She was younger than Mueller had been led to expect by Downes. Black frame glasses dominated her face, her red hair was drawn into a ponytail, and she wore blue jeans and a carnation-white turtleneck sweater. Pretty enough.
“Is that how you’ll dress?”
“I’m his maid.” Her voice had a tone of rebuke. “There are other clothes in the closet if I need them.”
“How well do you know him?”
“He doesn’t suspect. I’m in his apartment Wednesday afternoons to clean. He works at home while I’m there and I hear him on the phone. He doesn’t know I speak Russian. We talk sometimes. He’s a big fan of Rita Hayworth. He is very proper. But he’s a man. I’ve seen him look at me. He’s got an interest.”
He followed her into the bedroom. It was small with one window looking onto the fire escape without a view of a neighboring apartment. A fan magazine on the night table was open to a double-page spread of the just released Salome. Rita Hayworth lay in repose, gowned in diaphanous garments with the come-hither look of a famous glamour queen. There were framed family photos on the dresser, a lucky charm bracelet, and a box of
costume jewelry. He lifted one photo of a middle-aged couple with a child, and then drew it closer, studying the likeness.
“There’s even a family resemblance.” He looked at her. “Your name? Your cover name?”
“Jane. Is there anything I need to know?” she asked.
“About him?”
“The job?”
Mueller wondered what she’d been told. Probably nothing. Too many people in responsible positions who didn’t know what they were doing.
“We will be behind that wall.” He pointed to a large mirror on the bedroom wall. “Next door. There will be two of us. Me. A photographer. Two other men will be outside for security, to help calm him down if there is a need for that. It’s impossible to know how he’ll react. You’ll have to continue cleaning the embassy staff apartments for a few weeks and then you’ll be taken off. Operations will give you a new assignment.”
He removed an envelope from his sports jacket that contained two marijuana cigarettes. “Offer this to him. If he tries it, so much the better. The threat of a drug arrest would seal it.”
“How far do I take it?”
He averted his eyes. No one had told her anything. “Clothes have to be off. He has to be compromised. We need photographs that are unambiguous. You’ll have to judge when you’re uncomfortable.”
She nodded.
“Gesture to the mirror when you get to that point. We’ll come through the door.”
Mueller knew it would be worse than that. It always was. These situations were always chaotic, yelling, screaming, a lot of nasty things said, and they could also be dangerous. The john directed his anger at the thing nearest at hand. Not always. Some men resigned themselves. Others hit the girls.
“We will be right here,” Mueller said.
Taking down a man. The doomed animal thrashed against its binding ties when it saw the butcher’s knife.
“We will be in when you give the signal.” He looked at her face and was suddenly struck. “Have you done this before?”
