The Espionage Game

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  Still wearing his pajamas and a hurriedly collected overcoat, Lazarus walked silently in his bedroom slippers between the two men as they marched down the darkened main hallway of the Executive Wing of the White House. As before, he was taken to the president’s private office next to the Oval Office. The president was alone.

  “I’m on vacation,” Lazarus protested when he saw the president. “I believe you arranged it yourself, if I understand things correctly.”

  President Hayward peered wearily at Lazarus. He was dressed in jeans and a sports shirt. He also needed a shave.

  “If you two would wait outside, I would like to talk to Mr. Keesley in private,” he told the two agents in a low voice as he eyed Lazarus, who was standing haughtily in front of his desk. President Hayward waited while the two Secret Service agents withdrew.

  “Sit down, Lazarus,” he said.

  “I’d rather stand.”

  “Suit yourself,” the president replied as he looked down at his desktop. “This evening General William Winslow apparently shot and killed two guards, stole the CLEO computer system, and defected to the Russians. We found your mole, it seems.”

  Lazarus gazed at the president, showing no emotion.

  “He also apparently murdered Captain Wilma Korfman,” President Hayward added. This time Lazarus winced in anguish.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Korfman, I believe,” Lazarus corrected him in a subdued voice. The president nodded.

  “Please sit down,” President Hayward said. He waited for Lazarus to comply, but Lazarus remained standing.

  “Lazarus,” the president uttered with an exasperated sigh, “we’re both proud men. I’m known as an arrogant, egotistical bastard for the simple reason that I am all those things. However, I’ve never heard anyone call me stupid. I make mistakes, and I’ve made a serious one with you. I’ve mistreated you, and I’ve ignored your warnings, particularly in the last few days. I apologize.”

  He waited for a response; Lazarus remained impassive. “Well,” the president said, “thank you for not gloating.”

  “I’ve no need for that, Mr. President,” Lazarus responded. “And I’m truly sorry that I wasn’t able to prevent last night’s tragedy. I’ve failed.”

  “I want that treasonous bastard back,” the president growled. “He’s the first American general officer to defect since Benedict Arnold.”

  “I doubt that they’ll give him back,” Lazarus commented quietly. “That’s not their style.”

  “But he wantonly murdered all those people! Not only that, but there is evidence that he sabotaged the cannon on the airplane so that the Russians could shoot it down easier.”

  “There is also the embarrassment factor, Mr. President.” Lazarus noted as he plopped into a chair. “We both know that they could parade him in front of the world press and make us appear like fools. I might be able to arrange that he simply disappears, at least for a few years.”

  The president gawked at Lazarus Keesley. “How?”

  “Send a signal,” Lazarus replied. “My suggestion is a cover-up. Perhaps a plane accident at sea. We could include Winslow and all of the dead on the manifest. In a few days or so, I could go have a chat with them. I could also do a damage assessment at the same time and find out if they really have Cleo. It might be possible that she was damaged and is inoperative.”

  “They’d agree to it?”

  “They have enough problems at home without you upsetting their apple cart on purpose,” Lazarus answered, then paused. “We’ve made such deals before, and they’ve abided by them.”

  “Okay, Lazarus.” President Hayward muttered while he leaned back in his chair. “I’ll leave it up to you.”

  “I want that murderous bastard back.”

  Startled by Lazarus Keesley’s sudden announcement, Grigori Sechenov glanced up at Lazarus.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “You know damn well whom I’m talking about, Grigori,” Lazarus grumbled. “General Winslow.”

  Grigori glared at Lazarus.

  “I said that I want that murderous bastard back,” Lazarus growled. “William Winslow is a murderer. He killed two security policemen and Lieutenant Colonel Wilma Korfman. He murdered an unarmed woman in cold blood. We agreed years ago to stop the rough stuff, and now you used murder to steal the CLEO computer.”

  Grigori sneered. “I have won and now you are angry.”

  Lazarus’ face showed his frustration. “You broke our protocols, Grigori,” Lazarus argued. “First, by trying to kidnap Dr. MacCauley, and now a second time, when your mole murdered those men and that defenseless woman.”

  “General Winslow is dead,” Grigori replied matter-of-factly, ignoring Lazarus’ arguments. “You faked that yourselves with the ‘accident’ over the English Channel. I must admit, it was very cleverly done. How did you do it, electronic tricks?”

  The severe frown on Lazarus’ face relaxed a little. “Yes, the radar images that the air traffic controllers were tracking were actually generated by an electronic countermeasures aircraft that was flying five miles behind the fake executive jet. The electronic countermeasures officer faked the crash that nobody saw by simply turning the electronics off.”

  Grigori Sechenov smirked. “So died General Winslow in an unfortunate accident, lost at sea with Lieutenant Colonel Korfman and two bodyguards.” He nodded in approval.

  “Don’t you think, Lazarus,” he added after a short pause, “that it might be a trifle embarrassing if he were to suddenly reappear?”

  Lazarus peered at Grigori Sechenov. “Where is he?”

  “He’s in adacha somewhere in the Urals where he’ll be safe from you.” Grigori answered. “If it’s any consolation, please remember that I lost a very valuableshtepsel whom I’ve been running for over ten years.”

  “He was yours?”

  “From the day I recruited him in Paris,” Grigori declared with obvious pride. “It was like losing a faithful pet dog. Now that he is officially dead, let’s keep it that way.”

  Lazarus glanced down at the table and contemplated Grigori’s offer. It was all he had hoped for; General William Winslow would remain dead, as far as the world was concerned. And, in a way, it was a punishment. Winslow would live in an alien world with no hope of ever seeing his homeland or even communicating with anyone from it again. He would serve a life sentence in a gilded cage, but it was a life sentence nevertheless.

  “If I have your word on it,” Lazarus said, eyeing Grigori Sechenov.

  “I can only guarantee what will happen while I’m still in office, my friend,” Grigori responded. “I have my promises to General Winslow to keep, too; but none of them require my permitting him to communicate with anyone, even his family. You have my word that if you drop your efforts to get him back, nobody will ever hear from him again.”

  Lazarus nodded. Winslow would remain officially dead.

  Grigori Sechenov waited a moment and then commented, “Cleo is well, in case you’re interested. I saw her yesterday. She already can speak a few words of Russian. We expect her to try flying a Sukhoi S- 37 before long.”

  Lazarus Keesley glared at Grigori for a second before he realized that Grigori Sechenov wasn’t gloating; it was just idle chatter about the current activities of a mutual friend. Still it hurt, even if it wasn’t intentional.

  “Where is she?”

  “I’m sorry, Lazarus,” Grigori apologized, “but I think you can understand why I can’t tell you.”

  “I understand,” Lazarus grumbled.

  “She also asked me to give you her greetings,” Grigori added genially. “I think she likes you for some reason. Maybe it’s your pipe, but I suspect it’s because you were so polite to her.”

  “Polite?” Lazarus’ eyebrows furrowed in genuine surprise.

  “Yes,” Grigori replied. “She told me that you were the only one ever to call her ‘Miss Cleo.’ That impressed her.”

  Lazarus leaned back in his chair and studied Grigori. “Well
, Grigori, if it was your intention to prove that you have Cleo, you have. Still, I would prefer that you don’t rub your sordid little victory in. You’ve won, but you did it by cheating. And as for your tactics, I find them despicable.”

  “Despicable?”

  “Yes, you nearly started a nuclear war between Israel and Iraq. If we hadn’t blown up that cannon, there would been no Middle East today.”

  “That is were you are wrong, my friend,” Grigori replied. “We are not fools. Had the Middle East exploded, we know that we would have been blamed. Therefore, we never had any intention of the cannon actually being used in earnest. A small demolition charge was hidden in the powder magazine. There was to be an accident—once we had received our money.”

  Lazarus stared at the Russian.

  “Khalid wasn’t permitted anywhere near that weapon until such time as he had paid for it. That happened several days before your raid,” Grigori continued. “We planned to blow it up as soon as we had the CLEO computer. Fortunately, you blew it up yourselves, which made it much easier for us. That way we don’t have to explain the ‘accident’.”

  “Still, it was a terrible risk you took. One miscalculation and.…” Lazarus Keesley fell silent leaving his statement unfinished.

  “We had no other choice,” Grigori countered softly. “You yourself told me to give it our best shot. As it was, that’s exactly what we had to do. With a little luck, you might have won.”

  Lazarus Keesley emitted a sigh of acquiescence. “Yes, I guess that I did say that. You did win this round of the game, Grigori, but by cheating. Now, if you’re through, I beg that you let the loser hobble away and get some rest.”

  With that, Lazarus rose to his feet and signaled to his bodyguards that they were leaving.

  Jerry Rodell drifted through the misty gray as though he were a lost sparrow flying through a cloud. There was no up, no down, no right, no left. Nor was there any sound. He was alone, alone in a silent world of gray.

  Is this what death is?he remembered Cleo asking when they augered-in during their first flight inMary Sue . At the time, she had complained about having no data inputs—like now.

  Cleo!he called, or at least tried. He willed himself to speak, but he had failed to utter a sound. It was as though he had no body, no voice. He couldn’t even feel his heart beat.

  Cleo!he called again. And again he failed.

  For the first time, he sensed something…an odor, a scent. It was vaguely familiar.MADELINE! he cried when he recognized it. It was her scent, her perfume. Frantically, he struggled like a terrified bird trapped in a room, dashing to and fro, searching for a way out. He no longer cared if there was no up nor down—he had to get out. He had to get out of the cloud. He had to find Madeline—she was somewhere near.

  Tha-thump. He hesitated. He had heard something.What? he asked.

  Tha-thump … tha-thump … tha-thump … tha-thump … Tha-thump.

  A heart beat?he questioned.Whose?

  Tha-thump … tha-thump … tha-thump.…He listened to the sound. It was pleasant, reassuring, like Madeline’s touch.

  “Madeline,” he cried, remembering her scent. It was stronger now, far stronger. He suddenly realized that he heard himself. Shocked, he hesitated yet again, and was nearly overwhelmed by new sounds and sensations. There was wetness on his face, like a teardrop, and pressure on his chest, as though he were being hugged. Then he heard her speak.

  “Jerry!” she cried joyously.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  “That pretty much summarizes it, Mr. President.” Lazarus leaned back into his chair in the president’s private office. “According to the Russians, General Winslow is living in adacha somewhere in the Urals, and Cleo is learning to speak Russian and to fly Sukhois. So it seems like they’ve won again.”

  Outside, a lawn mower roared, as one of the White House gardeners gave the grass around a tree by the window its first trimming of the spring. A moment later, the noise subsided as the gardener moved on in search of other patches of grass in need of grooming.

  “I don’t understand why we never caught onto General Winslow before he defected.” President Hayward slid open a desk drawer and lifted the lid of his cigar humidor. As Lazarus Keesley and Jonathan Boswell watched, the president lit one of his Cuban panatelas and inhaled deeply, enjoying the rich aroma.

  “I did,” Lazarus admitted.

  “You what?” President Hayward stared at Lazarus Keesley in shock. “You knew?”

  “Well, Mr. President, I suspected him,” Lazarus explained. “I kept it to myself because I had no proof, not even circumstantial evidence.”

  President Hayward carefully laid his cigar in an ashtray on his desk. He folded his hands together and fought his rage. He glanced over to Director Boswell, who arched his eyebrows and shook his head.

  “Let me get this straight,” the president said as he leaned forward. “You suspected that General William Winslow had been turned by the Russians, and you didn’t report it to anyone?”

  Lazarus Keesley looked at the president and chuckled. “Mr. President, you do not accuse someone like General Winslow of something like that without some very strong evidence. All I had was a hunch.”

  Lazarus puffed contentedly on his pipe. “When they boasted that they would undoubtedly have Cleo in six months, I realized that they must have placed a mole in Velvet Rainbow so well that I would never find him.”

  He paused to contemplate his pipe. “That’s an assumption, by the way, which proved true. If you review the results of our extensive investigations, General Winslow’s record was spotless, even after three separate security organizations had run independent checks on him. They all found absolutely nothing.”

  “Yes, I’d have to agree with you about that,” the president said.

  “Well, as you can imagine,” Lazarus commented while he sucked on his pipe, “I was in quite a quandary. And I don’t mind admitting that I was completely baffled as to how to solve it.

  “Then, one night, I visited my daughter and her family,” Lazarus remarked, beaming his delight. “When I arrived, young Billy—he’s about fifteen and quite a bright lad—was happily breaking into the CIA’s computer complex.”

  Lazarus enjoyed the president’s reaction, particularly the gulping.

  “He’s what is commonly known as a computer hacker,” Lazarus explained proudly. “In any case, he got the telephone number from my wallet when he last visited me, and he began poking around the computer, seeing what national secrets he might find.”

  The president’s eyes bulged in shock. Lazarus smiled. “Naturally, we had a very serious talk about computer espionage, and I might say that I learned a lot more about computers than he learned about propriety.” Lazarus chuckled while reminiscing about the incident.

  “What does that have to do with the price of cheese in Wisconsin?” President Hayward interrupted, eyeing Lazarus suspiciously, wondering to himself if Lazarus Keesley was going senile.

  “At the time, not a damn thing, Mr. President.” Lazarus fumbled in his pocket for his lighter and tamped the ash in his pipe with it.

  “In any case, I soon realized that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about General Winslow’s perfidy, so I decided to sit back and watch,” Lazarus said as he started to relight his pipe.

  “You mean you did nothing but sit back and watch while they stole the computer?” President Hayward exclaimed.

  “I did not say that,” Lazarus countered defensively.

  “But you let him kill that poor woman and steal the computer, didn’t you?”

  Lazarus shook his head vigorously. “That was an unfortunate miscalculation. I never expected Winslow to bolt from cover and defect. As for Lieutenant Colonel Korfman, I feel quite badly about that, even though it was unavoidable.”

  “But you were prepared to let them steal it, weren’t you?” Hayward demanded.

  “Yes, sir,” Lazarus responded. “It was a risk I was willing to take if I could ca
tch Winslow red-handed.”

  “Why?” the president asked.

  “For one thing, it would have guaranteed your reelection, Mr. President. General Winslow is your chief rival’s brother,” Lazarus noted in a low voice. “How could Pete Winslow run for president while his brother was under arrest for espionage?”

  “If you think that I would have traded the security of this country for ensuring my reelection,…” the president began until he caught Lazarus Keesley’s piercing stare.

  “I’ve been around Washington long enough to know that any politician would, Mr. President,” Lazarus murmured while he puffed his pipe. “Besides, it was inevitable that they would eventually steal that computer; they wanted it too badly.”

  “You sound like you wanted them to get it,” Director Jonathan Boswell challenged.

  “Not in the least, Jonathan,” Lazarus replied. “However, there was little I could do to prevent it from happening.” He then faced toward the president.

  “As you know, Mr. President,” he said, “the Russians have been robbing us blind for years. It was a game. Both sides played it with a fervor. We’d invent something, and they’d steal it. So, we’d have to invent something new and thus continue the cycle.

  “However, the CLEO system is an entirely new breed of weapons system. Most of it isn’t programmed as we know it. That computer was trained like a baby. We spent countless millions of dollars educating the first one. Dr. MacCauley, herself, spent three years raising it like a baby, teaching it to speak, to read and to understand the spoken word. Now that training is complete, we can copy out all of that education— self-programming, if you will—and make duplicates or clones of the original CLEO system.”

  Lazarus Keesley glanced at both Boswell and the president.

  “However, now that the education is complete and paid for,” he continued, “we’ll never need to have to do it again. And we won’t. Building a new CLEO system from scratch would be too damned expensive.”