“Roger Pembroke for Michael Perlman” Roger announced, handing his passport through the small opening on the counter.
“Ledger,” the Marine pointed to an open register with signatures of recent visitors.
“Wait over there please,” the sergeant, drawled, pointing to a cluster of overstuffed chairs surrounding a glass table on the other side of the lobby. Roger saw the Marine pick-up the phone as he took a seat and selected a copy of last month’s Time magazine from a stack strewn haphazardly across the table.
As soon as he opened the magazine, he heard his name called. Looking up, he saw a small Asian woman approaching. “Follow me,” she smiled pleasantly, leading Roger down a long poorly lit hallway past several unmarked closed doors.
The young woman’s high-heeled boots tap-tapped a quick cadence on the hallway’s highly buffed surface, while fluorescent lights cast eerie shadows along the empty hall.
“In there” she pointed to the door on his right. “Mr. Perlman is expecting you.”
The office was large. The Cultural Attaché was a small dour looking man seated behind a highly polished walnut desk. Despite his size, he was a powerful looking man with broad shoulders, and a large baldhead that glistened in the bright fluorescent light. He had narrow slits for eyes, like someone who had spent too many hours gazing into the sun, but his pallid complexion gave a lie to the story his eyes told.
Pearlman’s most distinguishing feature was a deep red scar that ran across his forehead and down his cheek, past his cold grey eyes before disappearing into the man’s bushy Calvary officer’s mustache. He rose and extended his hand. “Ah my new man-- sit down. I was just looking over your papers. You know anything about culture?” he laughed.
Standing, the station chief looked older than Roger had first thought. The lack of any eyebrows, combined with the bristling mustache gave the man’s face a rather macabre appearance.
“No not much,” Roger replied nervously clearing his throat.
“Not a problem. As you know, it is just a cover. My principal role is CIA Station Chief. The culture thing gives us an opportunity to move around the country. Meet people, attend parties, hold poetry readings, and all that culture crap.
“The Agency always believes that if they bury their people in some pussy job at the embassies—something like commercial or cultural attaché, no one will know that they are actually spooks. Of course the people that matter—the opposition—they all have a pretty good idea. But, what the hell, maybe it keeps them guessing for awhile. It also seems less offensive to friendly governments who get uneasy about having CIA guys fooling around in their country.
“Anyway, you just met my assistant who brought you in here. She is pretty good—Chinese type Kazakh—lived here a long while. Used to be secretary to the ambassadors wife, but wanted a job with more substance. The ambassador asked me to take her, and she has been a lot of help. I am also head of embassy security and she had already been cleared by the ambassador's staff so I was glad to get her. She knows her way around the country, and her husband works across town for the Global Bank Corp. So don’t get any ideas,” Pearlman added jokingly.
That had been the furthest thing from Roger’s mind, but now that it was mentioned, she was damned attractive. Dark black hair, graceful walk, and small round breasts. Damned appealing in an exotic Byzantine Asian way.
“You work for Emmett Valentine. Right?”
“That’s right, Mr. Pearlman.”
“Michael, OK?”
“OK Michael,” Roger replied, relaxing a bit. I have worked for him for several months. Started right after I finished training at the Farm. It was a good introduction to the workings of the Agency. When he learned that Barry Durand got eliminated, he wanted to fill the vacancy as quickly as possible. I guess I was available.”
“I’ve known Valentine for a long time,” Pearlman offered. “Knew him when he was with the Agency the last time. They called him the maestro. Always playing music,” he chuckled. But, he is one hell of a man. He has forgotten more about gathering intelligence than most people ever knew. I am sure he would not have sent you here if he didn’t think you could do the job.
“So now, we have to think about how we are going to work you in here. We have an embassy party tonight so you can attend and meet the ambassador and his people. They are entertaining some American oilmen who are in the country eager to meet and greet the Kazakh officials. Later we will work you around town a bit to get you acquainted. Get familiar with some of the NGOs. USAID, World Bank, GBC and the entire alphabet of development organizations that operate in Almaty.
“By the way Roger let your hair grow.”
“My hair grow?” Roger asked puzzled.
“Yeah, let your hair grow longer. Maybe get some glasses. Tomorrow we will send you over to see the embassy’s doc. He can fit you with some clear glasses. Yeah that’s a good idea,” Pearlman added, complimenting himself on his ingenuity. “You don’t look too cultured. Too athletic. Did you play some type of ball in school?”
“Lacrosse,” Roger replied, taken off-guard.
“OK—OK long hair and glasses.” That will make you look more cultured,” he laughed. “That will do it. Then later today we will get you a weapon.”
“What do you use here?” Roger asked. This was more like it.
“Well we—hell, I am partial to the Glock 19. It packs a hell of a punch, but the base model is only about 6 inches long. It comes with a 15 shot magazine. You can also get an extended clip that will hold 33 bullets. Of course, that won’t be necessary unless the embassy comes under attack,” he laughed.
Strange sense of humor, Roger thought to himself, but smiled in acceptance.
“Have you ever used one of them before?”
“In training,” Roger replied. “They tried to acquaint us with all kinds of weapons we might have to use.”
“Good, we have a small range in the basement here if you ever want to practice. The jarheads guarding the gates like to keep in practice and some of us go down there sometimes to keep our hand in.
“We try to provide them with as much diversion as possible. Usually it’s only the older marines assigned to the embassies. There was a problem a few years ago at the Moscow station. One of the guards—a young stud—got bored and started fooling around with a local Russian broad. Ended up feeding her all kinds of classified information. He’s serving time now, and the State Department is more careful about who they assign.
“In a couple of days, after you get settled,” Pearlman moved on to a different subject, “we will start moving you around the country. Over to the oil fields, of course, but maybe that can wait for a while, all things considered. We don’t want you ending up like Durand. At least not right away,” he chuckled. “It would make me look bad to lose another agent.
“That quickly,” he added as an afterthought.
His comments didn’t seem overly reassuring.
“Do you have any idea what happened to him?” Roger asked.
“None—nada—zip—I have been going over our system here, but no idea. I reviewed our approach with headquarters, and they have been no help. No surprise. Someway, his name got leaked to the opposition, and we don’t even know who or which opposition we are dealing with. Could be the Russians or...”
“Mr. Valentine thinks it was the Russians.”
“Emmett always thinks it’s the Russians,” Perlman laughed. “And who knows maybe he is right. We are sure they were the ones fomenting the problems in Kyrgyzstan a few weeks ago.”
“Really—what makes you think that?”
“Well there was this newspaper guy—Syrgak Abdyldayev, or something like that. He reported in the local paper that there was a large group of Russian-speaking specialists that arrived to advise the Kyrgyz government. Shortly afterwards, President Bakiyev began to look to Russia for financial support, and then he began ignoring any of the opposing local factions. The reporter referred to the Russian’s assistance, “as oxygen
for a sinking submarine.”
“That was pretty colorful prose,” Roger observed.
“Too damned colorful for his own good it appears. In no time, three men with metal pipes attacked the poor bastard as he left his newspaper office. The goons broke both his arms, along with his ribs and a leg, and stabbed him 26 times in the ass.”
“Whew,” Roger exhaled. “That would certainly make a believer out of me.”
The two men looked at each other. There was nothing more to add. They both knew they were in a tough business.
“I also want you to get up to the Cosmodrome sometime,” the station chief continued. “By the rockets’ red glare,” he hummed to himself, looking into his desk for a file. “Ok, ok, here it is” he exclaimed, taking out a dog-eared manila folder from his top drawer. “Tomorrow I got to get organized. That would be a good job for my assistant,” he added. She was good looking, he thought to himself. It would be nice to have her close by working on those files. “Here is a list of contacts we have developed up there. You can look them over before you go.”
“Don’t you keep those locked up?” Roger asked incredulously.
“Yeah—yeah sometimes. Problem is, everything we got is classified, and the safe will only hold so much. Anyway, no one would know what the names represent. For all they know they might belong to the cleaning service.
“You understand, these are not our people, they are our joes. We have recruited them. We pay them. We buy and sell them. They’re kind of like a rent a spy.
“For one reason or another, they are willing to provide us with inside information—at least they claim it is inside information—our job is to verify it—on what the Russians are doing, and sometimes even what the Kazakhs are doing. But, we have to be damned careful about that. It wouldn’t do to get our asses kicked out of the country. Langley wouldn’t like that at all.
“That’s going to be part of your job here,” Perlman explained warming to his job of indoctrinating the new man, “to develop contacts. Build up a stable of your own joes. They can be priests, peasants, parolees, politicians, or perverts. Whatever gets the job done, as long as they have access we could care less,” he added with unveiled cynicism.
“That’s what Durand was doing when he got erased. He was very good at running joes. He had a lot of experience at that before he got here.”
“Anyway, I think maybe we will scrub the Cosmodrome for now, a good place for you to start would be going up to Tekeli. That should be a reasonably safe place to start. You know Charlie Connelly?”
Roger nodded, startled at the change of direction. “Yeah, I have heard of him. Mr. Valentine told me about Connelly. He is kind of a friend of his. Worked for him before I guess.”
“That’s right. I have never met him, but Emmett says he is one of the best amateurs he has ever seen. He has him hidden on the GBC privatization project. I don’t think that Trevor Gunn, who runs their office here, knows he is doing double duty—so we have to be careful.”
“I understand,” Roger assured his new boss. “Mr. Valentine warned me about that. But, he did want me to establish contact. Apparently, you can’t be sure when he might need some help.”
“Everyone is pretty familiar with the oil and gas reserves here,” the station chief explained. “All the countries are trying to get their part of the action. At the same time Kazakhstan has important mineral resources other countries need. Particularly now their industries are picking up and converting to new technologies. We are surrounded here by other stronger countries that would do anything to get their hands on some of these reserves. This always leads to corruption and turmoil, and the lead and zinc reserves are right in the center of their scopes.”
He was interrupted by his secretary announcing, “Mr. Pearlman, the man from the newspaper is waiting in the lobby to see you about the male chorus that is touring the country.”
“Thank you Mei Lyn. Go bring him in.”
“Good to meet you Roger, and welcome to Kazakhstan,” Michael Pearlman brusquely dismissed his new agent before moving on to the less interesting aspects of his job.
13
Tekeli
It was obvious to Charlie that he would need Nadia to translate the Russian words if he were to make any sense out of the puzzling diagram, but he wasn’t sure which room she was assigned. “Nadia, Nadia” he called loudly as he walked down the hallway.
A door opened at the far end, next to the kitchen. Nadia, wearing a white loosely-fitting robe, peered out of her doorway, curious to see who was calling her name. The light from the room behind her, presented a distorted silhouette in the dim hallway.
“I was just getting ready to take a shower,” she offered embarrassed.
“I need your help,” Charlie told her, passing by her in the doorway, stepping over her discarded clothes and lingerie littering the floor.
Nadia’s blush burned through her normally light complexion, as she stooped to pick up her discarded clothes..
The room was considerably smaller than his was. It contained a bed, a desk, one chair, a small sink below a cloudy mirror, leaving little unoccupied space.
“Take a look at this,” he told her sitting on the edge of the bed.
Nadia took the folded paper from him, and peered at it, seemingly as perplexed with the rough diagram as Charlie was. She turned away to retrieve her glasses from her the top of her desk.
While she studied the diagram, Charlie recognized that it was an awkward situation, and he tried to set her at ease. “Nadia,” he began, “I think you did a great job of translation this morning, under very difficult conditions with a hostile audience. I have used many of them around……”
“What is it?” she asked, sitting beside him examining the crumpled paper, ignoring his attempted compliment.
“Don’t know. It fell out of my shirt pocket when I was changing my clothes. The only thing I can figure out is that the wild-eyed miner who shoved me must have slipped it into my pocket. I can’t make any sense out of it, and thought you might understand the words.”
Nadia rotated the paper holding it up to the light. The diagram bore circles, numbers ranging from 1 to 3 digits, parallel and squiggly lines, and arrows leading in different directions. It must have been difficult for a man’s hand to squeeze so much onto such a small scrap of paper.
Nadia handed the diagram back to Charlie. “He is obviously not an artist,” she observed blandly, returning to her desk. She picked up a well-worn Russian/English dictionary, and withdrew a note pad from a desk drawer before returning to the bed.
Charlie held the diagram so she could see it as she began to make a list of the translated words. Minutes before, she was a blushing embarrassed young woman, tightly clutching her robe around her. Now she had become transformed into a Germanic style super-organizer, translating barely intelligible scribbles into words that might be better understood by her foreign associates.
Pursing her lips, she wrote on her pad:
concentrator,
repair and machine works,
mouth,
“What are you getting?” Charlie asked.
Nadia shrugged and continued studying the diagram completely engrossed in her task.
cage,
shaft,
ventilator,
As she bent over her note pad, attempting to translate unfamiliar terms, Charlie couldn’t avoid noticing her increasingly exposed breasts.
She unconsciously adjusted her round thick spectacles, that were reflecting the glare from the fluorescent overhead light. Probably Russian Government issued. No make-up. Tough but vulnerable. Considerably younger than Charlie. No nonsense here he concluded. She’s all business.
underground supervisor’s office,
tunnel 1,
wagon track,
Can you make any sense out of it at all? Charlie asked impatiently.
“Not a lot,” she answered, adjusting her robe before handing him the list of terms she had completed. “I think it
is probably the location of the mine, but we already knew where that was. Look here, this must be the entranceway, and this looks like it may be the lift, but after that I have no idea what it shows. See these arrows. They must be showing direction. But then, these symbols—what could they mean? Look here at these four or maybe five—they’re badly smudged—parallel lines. I have no idea what most of these other things are—either in Russian or English.”
“Or why the hell the guy would make such an effort to give the note to us without anyone seeing him.” Charlie added in frustration. “He must have thought it was important, but to whom? To us or to him?
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