“And then what happened?” asked Benford. Redheaded Major Thorstad took a drink of water from a carafe in the middle of the conference room. Three OSI officers were taking copious notes, to Benford’s obvious annoyance. The jubilant OSI guys didn’t care: Contact with RIS—Russian Intelligence Service. In suburban Washington. The first encounter in three years. Their DA operation. It would be the shit-hot lead in the monthly activity report for the air force brass. Mr. Chips over there from CIA could kiss their asses.
“Well, I can tell you, the guy was quite rude,” said Thorstad. Benford shifted in his seat and only at the last minute remembered this ginger snap was not a subordinate and therefore, technically, he could not bellow at him.
“He was forty-five minutes late in appearing,” said Thorstad. “I walked the hiking trail two complete times.” He held up two fingers to clarify for Benford. The OSI guys were taking down every word.
“They probably had people in the woods with night-vision goggles, looking at your approach, watching for coverage,” said Benford.
Thorstad snapped his fingers. “You’re absolutely correct, Mr. Benford. The man shined a flashlight in both directions down the tunnel. It was a signal of some sort.” Benford suppressed a moan.
“I am gratified you agree,” Benford said, his tone lost on Thorstad, who was trying to remember more details. Benford wondered if the major even considered that a different signal from that flashlight might have ended with him crumpled on the wet bricks of the tunnel.
“He took the flash card,” said Thorstad, “and gave me this card with the next meeting site on it. In two weeks, in Georgetown.”
Benford took the card, read it while feeling the satiny finish, and slid it to the OSI men at the end of the table.
“Water-soluble paper. Make sure you copy the instructions verbatim and put this in a glassine envelope. It’ll decompose in three weeks if you don’t keep it out of the atmosphere.” The OSI officers looked at one another, unsure about “verbatim” and “glassine.” Benford turned to Thorstad.
“Well, I suppose it went as well as we could expect,” Benford said. “The unpleasant fellow—”
“I forgot to say that he reeked—absolutely reeked—of alcohol, apart from the rudeness,” said Thorstad, interrupting.
“Yes, well, he probably has troubles of his own at home,” said Benford. Thorstad looked a little guilty at being so unfair: He had not considered that the man might be having problems. Benford looked with clinical interest at the changing expressions on Thorstad’s face. Where did OSI find this man-child major?
“He almost certainly was a low-level security officer from the embassy, perhaps from the rezidentura,” said Benford. “The Center would not risk sending one of their active operations officers under cover to this meeting.”
Thorstad nodded. Benford turned to address the OSI men. “I would urge restraint in writing up this contact and predicting further progress,” he said. “The likelihood of another meeting is exceedingly slim, given that the feed material is dated. The Russians are looking for exceptional intelligence. If they don’t get it, they will conclude that the major is a dispatched volunteer and will simply turn the operation off.”
The OSI men looked back glumly.
“I anticipate you will be left waiting at the next rendezvous,” said Benford to Thorstad. “You should not be surprised at a no-show.”
Benford rose and left the room. One of the OSI men flipped him the bird behind his back. Thorstad glared at him.
“At ease, sergeant. That’s not the way we do things in the Air Force,” Thorstad said.
ARCADIA’S LUMPIA
Dice cabbage, carrots, onion, scallion, and garlic and sauté in oil with soy sauce. Brown ground pork and combine with the vegetables. Wrap filling tightly in large wonton or lumpia wrappers. Fry in vegetable oil until crispy and golden brown.
15
Locked in the wood-paneled study of his house, Seb Angevine finished transferring the nine digital frames he had photographed directly off his office computer screen onto the SEARCHLIGHT stick being prepared for the second contact with the Russians. OSI had loaded twenty-three carefully edited frames of performance parameter documents for the F-22 Raptor, a stealth-fighter program that had been discontinued due to cost overruns and contractor disputes. Air Force CI analysts argued that the information would be tantalizing to the Russians and would keep the ball rolling. Angevine barely looked at the OSI feed material. His nine frames would be the main course and his “love letter” in the tenth digital frame at the end of the dump requested another $100,000 be cached in Rock Creek Woods. Angevine had no doubt the Russians would pay.
He had picked up the first payment early on a Sunday morning at the cache site without any trouble, though he nervously had given the Russians an extra day, in case they needed more time. But he was worried for nothing. The forest was dense along Oregon Avenue NW, and there were plenty of quiet suburban streets in the Barnaby Woods neighborhood to park his car without problems. The day was fine and the air still. There were no cars moving, and the woods were empty. Though he was confident that the Russians would not jeopardize their new case by trying to surveil the cache site, Angevine kept his eyes open, not only for the suspicious early morning loiterer but also for likely places the Russians could have set up a motion-activated camera. They wouldn’t risk it, but he would be cautious.
The sunny paved trail led conveniently to a massive, hurricane-felled oak tree whose exposed root ball created a natural pocket from which Angevine with trembling hands extracted a bread-loaf-sized package wrapped seamlessly in blue packing tape. The loamy heft of the package was impressive. A hundred Gs. A Porsche Carrera. That Rolex GMT-Master II.
So he told the Russians to load another hundred Gs. They must be shitting themselves in the rezidentura up there on Wisconsin Avenue, wondering who the fuck TRITON was, what kind of mastermind he was, where he worked. Someone had included a plain typed note in the money package addressed to “dear friend,” with a phone number for him in case he needed to talk. Yeah right, va t’en faire foutre, go fuck yourself.
Angevine noted that the Russians of course had been reserved and cautious in their message of greeting and references to future contact. They still did not know what they had in TRITON, but already the information about the Caracas recruitment would be incontrovertible proof that they potentially had a colossal asset. TRITON: monarch of the sea. Anonymous. Monumental.
The Russians would be patient, solicitous: They were confident in the expectation that eventually they would find out who he was. No chance, thought Angevine. TRITON would emerge from the sea foam, wave his trident, and call up a howling gale, then slip beneath the waves, untouchable. And that pouffiasse, that bitch Bevacqua, could sit behind her desk and try to figure out what was happening to her Clandestine Service.
The Russians already had his first dump: the counterintelligence lead from Caracas. Now it was time to pass something even better, even more explosive: Nine images of two separate Restricted Handling cables sent by Athens Station to Langley reporting two lengthy debriefing sessions on sensitive Russian military research and development conducted by a Russian-speaking CIA case officer with a source identified only as LYRIC.
Ten p.m. Major Glenn Thorstad stood in shadow in the little ornamental public garden on Grace Street NW, off Wisconsin Avenue, overlooking the C&O Canal. He was dressed in civilian clothes, a jacket over an open-necked shirt. He wore a wide-brimmed suede hat with a leather band, not quite a cowboy hat—that would have been too conspicuous—more like an Indiana Jones number, to cover his red hair. He checked his watch for the fifth time in the last thirty minutes.
Not counting his contact with the Russian security thug in the tunnel, this would be his first face-to-face meeting with a Russian intelligence officer, something he had never contemplated in his entire career with the Air Force. He had been working in TransComm—Transport Command, a vital cog in the Air Force machine—and had rise
n through a series of important jobs in coordination, scheduling, and finance. He had been spotted and drafted by OSI for his demonstrable access to an immense range of classified information. He sailed through security clearance, for he had nothing to hide—shoot, he didn’t even drink. Thorstad originally had been flattered that OSI planners approached him to suggest he play a double agent, and the briefings and practice sessions were exciting and different. But now, on the street, waiting for the SVR, he wasn’t so sure.
Thorstad had been coached on what to say, on what questions the Russians would throw at him to test him. OSI briefers told him the Russians would assume he was a double until and unless he proved to them that he was not—through unimpeachable feed material and authentic behavior.
“What’s authentic behavior for a double agent?” Thorstad asked his training team at the same meeting. The OSI men looked at one another—no one had actually asked them that before. A fussy voice had come from the corner of the room, from a rumpled man with mussed hair and the intonation of a Latin teacher racked with gout.
“There is no such thing, so don’t waste time thinking there is,” said Benford, who had come uninvited to this briefing of Thorstad on the eve of his first potential substantive contact with SVR. “Act the way you feel: scared, guilty, mistrustful. You’re an Air Force major who’s betraying his country.”
Thorstad swallowed hard. This uncomfortable fellow again? “That’s right, you’re a traitor,” said Benford, “and the Russians will take your information and give you a bit of money, and when your access dries up, or the FBI apprehends you, Moscow will shrug their shoulders and go away until the next Major Thorstad appears at their door.”
Thorstad stared at Benford, who had just stood up and was pacing a little. “It’s all right to feel shitty; the Russians will see it and be reassured.” Benford turned to look at the OSI men, who shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.
Major Thorstad replayed Benford’s words as he stood in the shadows waiting for his contact to appear. He was expecting another seven-foot brute in a leather jacket to materialize, spin him around, shove him against the brick wall of the garden, and brusquely frisk him for a wire. He didn’t know what to expect. He checked the flash card in his pocket for the eleventh time: F-22 Raptor. His second pass of intelligence to the opposition.
From over the low garden wall the sounds of a party drifted in the night air from a canal barge making its way down the waterway. Thorstad looked down at the fairy lights reflected off the water. He wished he were down there instead of here. A soft voice beside him startled him.
“Are you Glenn?” A low female voice. Thorstad turned. A woman with blond hair stood with her hands in the pockets of a light coat. She looked about fifty-five, short and somewhat heavyset. The lights from the buildings across the canal illuminated a round face with wise brown eyes and a mouth crinkled at the corners. She wore her hair up in a bun. She smiled politely at him. Librarian, personnel counselor, hospital administrator. She didn’t even look Russian. She spoke fluently in a singsongy voice, with a trace of a foreign accent, like Dutch or Norwegian. Thorstad didn’t know what to say.
“Air Force Major Thorstad?” The woman smiled taking a step closer. “Born 1979 in Farmington, Minnesota?” Thorstad swallowed and nodded. “From the name I suppose your family is Swedish?”
“Third generation,” mumbled Thorstad. He sounded idiotic.
“Talar ni svenska?” she said. “Do you speak Swedish?”
“Only a few words,” said Thorstad.
“Charmerande,” said the woman. “How charming. I remember my travels in Sweden fondly. Gillar du kroppkakor, do you like potato dumplings? So light and delectable.” Thorstad could only stare at this merry matron as she rambled on about Swedish food.
“But I suppose we should speak English, don’t you agree?”
Thorstad nodded again.
“Will you walk a little way with me?” said the woman. She actually stepped up to him and hooked her hand through his arm, like an aunt out for a Sunday stroll after dinner.
“My name is Yulia,” said the woman as they started walking down the dark, narrow street. Brick buildings on either side were closed and quiet. They came up to a smaller street—narrow and brick-paved—that ran downhill toward the Potomac and the waterfront park. There was no one else moving and their footsteps were muffled as Yulia turned them into the dark lane—Cecil Place NW—by gently tugging his arm in the direction she wanted to go. If Thorstad had had some street training he might have noticed a shadowy figure standing still at the top of the street, watching the two. Another silhouetted figure stood beside a lamppost at the bottom of the lane watching them approach. A half block away on Water Street, in the shadow of the elevated Whitehurst Freeway, an indistinct face peered out the windshield of a parked van. The man periodically checked the mirrors. Yulia Zarubina, SVR rezident in Washington—shveja, the seamstress—had brought her boys out tonight.
“I am glad you contacted me,” she said, still holding Thorstad’s arm, but looking down at her feet. “I’d like to help you any way I can.”
Thorstad again didn’t know what to say—the OSI guys had prepared him for a spittle-flecked tirade from an overgrown head-knocker.
“Tell me a little about yourself, Glenn,” Yulia said, looking up at him.
Golly, he thought, even though she’s RIS, she’s courteous. He didn’t feel the seamstress’s chain stitches begin to envelop him.
In the space of two minutes, Zarubina determined to her satisfaction that Thorstad was who she thought he was—nevinnyi, an innocent—and almost certainly not the author of the “extra material” on the first stick. She smiled again and started building her own maskirovka, her deception. She gently chided the major for the outdated intelligence in his first exchange. “The Raptor program, for goodness’ sake; can’t you find something a little more current, Glenn? After all, you are in such an important position. I have high hopes for us.”
Thorstad was surprised, for this was not what he had been told to expect. “What do you have in mind?” he asked, remembering at the last minute that his OSI support team had told him to elicit information and requirements from the Russians. Yeah, elicit. Zarubina looked out at the nighttime Potomac, at the fairy lights of Rosslyn, and at the dark trees of Roosevelt Island.
“These things are so technical,” said Yulia, squeezing his arm as they walked slowly along the waterfront. Her eyes caught his and she smiled, a grandmother about to repeat a recipe for cookies. “But it would be lovely if you could bring me any information—current diagnostics, flight-test data, design analyses—regarding the problem of wing buffeting in the F-35. That really would be lovely.” She looked up at Thorstad and her eyes crinkled at the corners.
“The thirty-five?” said Thorstad. It sounded as though she knew a lot.
“Yes, I believe you call it the Lightning II. I hope you can find something. I was so excited when you contacted me.” Zarubina seldom used the words “Center,” “Moscow,” and “Russia,” and always kept it personal. There would be time for the relationship to be utverdivshiysya, institutionalized, by the Center, when it was too late to stop.
The Americans, thankfully, were predictable. She was relying on this American naïf to go back to his handlers—she correctly assumed this was an OSI initiative—and report that the Russians were interested, really interested, and that the DA op was on its way. Zarubina’s personal involvement testified to that, and she hoped the Air Force CI officers would concur. She must continue meeting with this Thorstad creature, feign interest and patience, continue asking for information the Air Force would never agree to pass. Whoever this TRITON was, he needed the channel kept open and active.
There might be some opportunities for aktivnye meropriyatiya, active measures, disinformation, in the intelligence requirements levied on Thorstad, thought Zarubina. She had once asked a French military attaché—another double agent—for operational manuals on the Mirage 2000N, volumes o
ne through twelve and fifteen through twenty-two. When the goggling Frenchman asked her why not volumes thirteen and fourteen (the books describing the three kiloton ASMP—the French acronym for “medium-range air-to-surface”—nuclear missile carried by the 2000N), Zarubina had patted her hair and ignored the question—as if uninterested in something she already possessed—triggering a two-year French mole hunt in the Ministry of Defense, and a constitutional crisis in the Élysée Palace regarding the continued viability of France’s nuclear deterrence policy. That active measure had been inspired.
Her exceptional mind was running on this third track even while she spoke to Thorstad in soothing tones. With one ear she listened to her countersurveillance team working around her on the earpiece on the side she kept away from Thorstad. She had Thorstad’s thumb drive in her pocket and was eager to see if the mystery source TRITON had again appended anything. Zarubina had an intuition that this was the beginning of a major case.
At the end of their walk, she watched Thorstad in his ridiculous wide-brimmed shlyapa trudge up Thirty-First Street NW toward the lights of M Street. Zarubina hoped this TRITON was intelligent. It didn’t reassure her that he had chosen a code name for himself—a worrying possible indicator of the ego of an epic megalomaniac. Besides monarch of the sea, “triton” in Russian meant “newt.” Not exactly the most heroic cryptonym for an agent, thought Zarubina, but perhaps naming oneself after a squirmy amphibian will prove to be apt.
“She was courteous and attentive,” said Thorstad. He was sitting at a table in a Pentagon conference room surrounded by OSI agents and two officers from A-2 counterintelligence. Benford sat quietly at the end of the table, looking up at the ceiling as if he were thinking about what to have for dinner.
Red Sparrow 02 - Palace of Treason Page 22
