by Paul Vidich
The operator went over the test procedure. He gave Mueller the list of subjects that he would ask questions about and Mueller looked up when he’d finished reviewing the long, single-spaced document that could have been a book.
“You’ve forgotten something,” he said caustically, leafing through the long document.
That got the operator’s attention.
Mueller bit his tongue.
The operator attached Mueller to the machine, taping wires to chest, thigh, arm, and hand.
“Ready?”
Mueller nodded.
“We’re recording this, so a nod doesn’t qualify as an answer. You have to speak. Understand?”
Mueller had never been good at taking orders or being corrected, and the operator’s tone of voice deepened his aggravation that he had to be there in the first place. “Yes. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
He was asked his name, address, place of birth, parents’ names—neutral subjects that produced a rhythm to the session. The second series of questions related to his early work at the OSS and the Agency.
“How long were you stationed in Vienna?”
“Nineteen forty-seven to nineteen forty-nine.”
“Exact dates?”
“I don’t have the day or week. Is that necessary? They’re in my files. You can check there.”
“The exact dates, please.”
Mueller paused. “January, I don’t know, second week of January nineteen forty-seven to December twenty-fifth, nineteen forty-nine. I resented flying on Christmas. That’s how I know the date.”
“What were your responsibilities?”
“Operations. I ran Soviet agents.”
“How many?”
“Half a dozen?”
“Six?”
Mueller nodded.
“Speak the answer.”
“Six.”
“What can you tell me about Vienna?”
“Vienna? A divided city. Dirty. Cold. Rusting tanks still sat in the street. The Soviets were always looking to stir up trouble. I lived in the American sector near the Danube, which smelled terribly because the sewage plant didn’t have fuel and buildings discharged waste straight into the water.”
“Were you married at the time?”
“Yes.”
“Czech?”
How did they know that? “What type of question is that?”
“Answer it, please.”
Mueller was cautious. “Yes.”
“Did you mention her nationality in your activity report?”
“No.”
“Your wife worked with you in operations. It says here she was your translator. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did the Russians approach you to work for them?”
“All the time.”
“Did you work for them?”
Mueller looked directly at the operator. “No.”
“Did they offer you money?”
“For what?”
“For any reason?”
“No. . . . I take that back. A Soviet colonel bought me a drink once. I let him pay,” Mueller threw out. “I mentioned that in my weekly report.”
The operator looked at his typed list of questions. “Have you ever taken classified documents home?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
They knew of one. “Three times.”
“You’re lying about that.”
“No, I’m not lying.”
“You’re nervous, aren’t you?”
“You’re making me nervous.”
“Do you take drugs?”
“I did not take meprobamate this morning.”
“Do you take drugs?”
“No.” He snapped his answer and he glared at the operator. This is what they wanted. They wanted to get him agitated. Mueller let his tension flow from his chest to his arms down his hands and then discharge from his fingertips into an imaginary bucket. Everyone needed a strategy to get through the polygraph. The morning session lasted four hours and broke for lunch. He had sweated through his shirt. He had been mostly calm, and he’d bitten his tongue when a stupid question provoked his desire to respond sarcastically. He stared out the window and kept coming back to the same nagging question. How did they know his ex-wife was Czech? Her family claimed to be Austrian to avoid being deported by the Soviets to the east. How did they know where her parents lived, her maiden name, and the background of her family? The end of one question in his mind became the beginning of another, and he found himself parsing the meanings of the operator’s words, meanings that were overt and obvious but within each question were hidden consequences. His anger flared from the torrent of compromising words. That emotion was alive when the operator fixed wires to his body for the afternoon session.
“Do you know Yuri Vasilenko?”
They knew he did. “Yes.”
“Who is he?”
“It’s all in the file. Soviet NKVD. People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Father of a talented boy. I’ve met the boy. You can mark that down. Someone might find it relevant.”
“How many times did you meet Vasilenko in the past two months?”
“Probably eight times.”
“Did you write a report of each meeting?”
“No.”
“How many reports did you write?”
“Five.”
“When was your first meeting with Vasilenko?”
“Early March. Stalin was already dead. I don’t remember the exact date. It was in Centreville.”
“Were you alone?”
Beth. “Yes.”
The operator looked up from his machine’s dials. “Were you alone when you met Vasilenko in early March?”
Mueller felt his heart beat with his deception. Mueller saw the operator make a note. He snapped, “I was not alone. I was with a woman. Keep her out of this.”
The operator stood and left the room. What bothered them was deception. One deception put all his questions in jeopardy.
15
* * *
QUAIL HUNTING
YOU FAILED,” the director said. It was a vague remark. He could have been speaking about a bad opening night at the National Theatre.
Mueller sat next to the director on an electric golf cart that bumped along a carriage path that meandered through a field of dry, clumped grass near Chesapeake Bay. Two shotguns poked out of golf bags in the back seat, and a .22 caliber pistol lay on the director’s lap. The director pointed to a small blue- and gold-flecked bird with white collar that ran on sturdy legs and disappeared into the brush. “Sonofabitch,” he cried. “She’s running from her clutch. Taking our eyes away from the chicks she’s protecting. Patience, George, patience. We’re close. We’ll get one.” The director slowed the golf cart and put his hand on his long-barrel pistol. The flush of excitement added to the reddening effect of the hot sun beating down from a turquoise sky.
“You failed,” he repeated, to make sure he’d been heard. “You were sassy, but it wasn’t that. The last question. Everything else was fine.”
Mueller was silent. He stopped himself from saying what he wanted to say. Mueller knew it wasn’t good form not to care about the test and the new rules.
The director glanced at Mueller. “Fine until he asked about the girl.”
“I don’t want Beth involved.”
“You’ll have to step off the Council.”
“And onto the list?”
“You’re on the list.” The director cast a sideways glance. “Since Walker’s men picked you up in Union Station. Jesuschrist, George, a men’s room?” The director cast his eyes over the terrain for a likely habitat. “Take the polygraph again.”
“It doesn’t measure any
thing except excitement. You know that. He got me excited. I don’t believe in it.”
“Neither do I. But Coffin needs a clean pass. You can’t talk yourself out of a lie. Even a silly lie. It colors the whole session. One deception brings on all of his paranoid speculations, and he’s kept a list of every tiny detail of your sloppy work that he’s turning into a goddamn project. We aren’t a club anymore. Those days are gone. Pass the test. Let’s move on. I need you on the Council.”
Mueller gripped his seat against the bumps on the path that came faster as the director pushed the golf cart’s speed. He was jostled and when he looked at the director, he was surprised at the pleasure he took driving fast, almost recklessly.
“We’ve known each other how long?” the director asked, speaking over the noise. Wind lifted his thinning hair. He had the flushed exuberance of a hunter. “I don’t trust many people, George, but I trust you. I trust you because I know you. This town resents us, you and me. They resent that I get the calls from the president asking what’s going on in Moscow. Well, you know, I don’t have a goddamn clue what’s going on, but I can’t tell him that.”
The director brought the golf cart to an abrupt stop. He looked at Mueller. “Pass the test. The FBI can’t interfere if Coffin tells them you’ve passed. There are techniques, you know. A pill.”
Mueller nodded.
“This is a good spot. The brush over there has got something. Grab a shotgun.” Mueller took his and gave the other to the director, who cupped hands to his mouth and whistled, producing a clear, three-note call. He repeated it twice.
It was Mueller’s nature to be cooperative and agreeable, and he found it difficult to reject a direct plea. He had discovered that the thing that got him in trouble in his adult life was his tolerance. With it came a willingness to accede to requests others made of him. He wasn’t rude, or as rude as he could be. Senior positions were held by rude, impatient men who shouted to get their way, slammed fists in meetings, yelled at secretaries for the slightest scheduling error, or some other minor infraction. These men resented that Mueller’s long acquaintance with the director gave him access above his grade. He and the director shared a quality of empathy. It was its own sort of club. Not good for espionage work. But good for living. They could sit in a crowded room with loud ranting case officers, and with a quick sideways glance, acknowledge each other like amused conspirators.
The director lifted his shotgun and pointed to clumped grass near the field’s edge, thirty feet distant.
“Beria was arrested,” the director said, splitting his concentration. “We got word this morning. He was arrested in the middle of a presidium meeting, right there in front of their top leadership. Grabbed at the podium. It’s a rat hole in Moscow now. Impossible to know what’s going on. I read all the cable traffic and you can’t make heads or tails of the place. It’s a power struggle. Purges are coming. Beria is the first.”
The director sighted down the shotgun barrel at a low bush. One eye closed, sighting on the target, he added, “Malenkov had his picture in Pravda yesterday where the only other person visible is Stalin. Stalin’s been dead a month. It’s an old photo. This is what we’re reduced to, George, speculating about who is going to succeed Stalin by looking at photos in the newspaper. What we need is our own goddamn Protocol.”
The director lowered his shotgun and studied another clump of grass and evaluated its prospects for quail.
“It’s a very unstable time. The Soviets have a hate-America campaign on. They are talking up their good friends the Red Chinese. I’ve got Eisenhower calling up every morning asking what I think is going on—Sonofabitch. Look over there.”
The director fired his shotgun harmlessly into the air. The explosion of sound excited the grass and a covey of quail alighted, flying almost vertically like helicopters. The director whipped his long-barrel .22 pistol from his lap and got off three quick shots. One quail dropped straight to the ground.
“It mangles them a bit,” the director said. “Tough to eat. But it’s better sport.”
The director turned to Mueller and laid down his pistol. Mueller felt the pause in the director’s thinking. He knew they’d come to the point of the meeting.
“No one can know what we’re doing. No one. We need to handle this ourselves. That’s always been true, but now, today, it’s urgent.” He looked at Mueller. “What I am going to say has to stay between us. I trust Coffin, but he sees evil where there is only human error, and he will take us down a rat hole. I like Roger, but I don’t trust him. He’s someone they could turn. I agree with Coffin on that. So, that leaves you. Pass the test. When we’ve got Protocol you can go off to your ivory tower. That’s our bargain.”
The director started the golf cart and headed back to their parked car. “Does Protocol exist?” he asked in a singsong. He looked at Mueller, who gripped his seat against the bounding car. “What if there is no Protocol? What if the Soviets planted the idea of Protocol so we tie ourselves in knots looking for the Heffalump?”
There was a beat of silence between the two men.
“They’re better at this game than we are, you know.”
Mueller knew this was his test. “Protocol exists. They’re protecting him.”
16
* * *
WITHDRAWAL
MUELLER SAT in his cluttered office on the third floor of Quarter’s Eye and gazed out the window. There was a mildew smell brought on by the humidity and cold in the underheated building; ventilation in the old barracks had never been properly installed, and this hint of mold was always there to remind him of the temporary nature of his office.
His mind was in turmoil. The thought of submitting himself to a second polygraph test was profoundly repugnant. For what? To be irritated again? They’d now focus on Beth, and he didn’t want to go down that path. Of course, he knew that the point of it was to provide an objective measure of his usefulness—Did I use the word “usefulness”? he thought. He’d meant “truthfulness.” He smiled at his unconscious conflation of words. Playing their game bothered him, because he no longer wanted in on the game, and his discontent surfaced and forced the error. What was the point of a second test? He would fail that too.
It didn’t surprise Mueller that colleagues and secretaries seemed to know of his failure. Polygraph results stayed confidential, but the fact that you’d taken the test was not, and there was always gossip and speculation. Secrets were restless things. Secrets got out. When he got into the office that afternoon, he got a sideways glance from the receptionist, and he heard a secretary lower her voice conspiratorially as he passed her desk. Secretaries were always the first to know. He’d detected a vague reticence in the man who occupied the office next to his, a hail-fellow-well-met man who always offered a loud greeting. No one said anything, but everyone knew. Mueller had failed.
What surprised Mueller was that he hadn’t seen it coming. He’d stepped around a privet hedge in his Alice in Wonderland world and fallen through a trapdoor. He felt like he was playing a walk-on role that someone had written for him. Things that had once been clear were now opaque and his options had narrowed. The motivations of men around him were suspect, and he no longer knew whom to trust. He no longer knew how much of what he knew he could believe. Yes, he had mistakenly taken his briefcase with him to the station, and that was an error, but that hid the deeper issue that infected his judgment. He just didn’t care anymore and for that reason he hadn’t seen this coming. He needed to get out.
Mueller opened his desk drawer and removed the envelope with the letter of resignation that he’d written but not sent. Three sentences. Short and to the point. He had already signed the letter, so in a sense he had resigned in his mind, and all that remained was to announce his decision. He considered a brace of doubts. Would he be blacklisted? Would he lose the teaching position he’d been offered? And how would the cloud of suspicion over him play ou
t in a long tail of an FBI inquiry? His mind repeated the questions, but he had no answers. He sealed the envelope.
He called his secretary.
Dorothy was at his door promptly. A young widow of the war who’d moved to the capital from the Deep South, and stayed on after she got the grievous news on D-day. She was polite, well educated, and smart beyond the needs of the office.
“Would you see that this goes to Rose, the director’s secretary?” She stood alertly in front of his desk. He handed her the envelope.
“I’ll take it now.”
“Monday,” he said.
“Not tomorrow?”
“I won’t be in the office tomorrow,” he said vaguely.
“Are you taking the day off?”
“It doesn’t really concern you.” He said this without thinking.
Afterward, it struck him that he hadn’t needed to be brusque like that. She was only doing her job. It was up to her to manage his appointments and take his calls, and she’d need to know what to say if someone came looking for him. It would be a poor reflection on her if she didn’t have an answer other than “I don’t know.” He should have thought of that.
These thoughts came to him on the Greyhound bus to Centreville. It was late. He was alone on the last bus out of town Thursday ahead of the first weekenders who would start traveling in the morning. He didn’t want to worry about who might be on the bus to see him, so he’d gone at an off hour. He needed time alone to consider his next steps.
He stepped off the bus at 11:00 p.m. Mist from the bay had rolled in and hung low to the ground between budding trees and the silence of the night. What struck him first was the quiet. The bus’s growling engine had faded and there was only the mournful foghorn in the distance and somewhere along the street the tinny sound of a radio. He glanced up the street and then in the opposite direction toward the white church. There was no one out. Main Street was empty except for the sheriff’s patrol car parked in front of the courthouse. He found his bicycle chained to the lamppost where he’d left it weeks before. A dog loped along the sidewalk but paid no attention to the stranger attaching a duffel bag to his bike. Alone and free. He wondered how long that would last.
