A Death in Geneva

by A. Denis Clift

  The Soviets’ forty-five-acre Pioneer Point estate on the Eastern Shore of Maryland was under constant FBI surveillance. Soviet Embassy employees and their families arrived by convoy in cars and vans each weekend. They stayed put behind the linked chain fence, then left the estate in the hands of its “residents” until the following weekend.

  The Colombo report had brought Sweetman into the case. A rare specimen since coming ashore with the Agency, he had the Bureau’s respect, reinforced by seven out of eight scores in CIA-FBI operations, the expulsion just two months before of five bloc diplomats using UN cover for their espionage. A Czech military attaché’s defection had provided the Pioneer Point link. Others in the Agency had conducted the preliminary interviews. His first statement, six hours in length, had included the words Baltimore and Chesapeake Bay several times. Computer analysis had dispassionately cross-referenced the interview with the Pioneer Point surveillance, a copy of the report going to the Pioneer Point team.

  Sweetman had spent a week with the attaché, closeted in safehouse debriefing, working outward from the officer’s former duties, the primary mission and interests of the Czech Army and Air Force, their targets in Washington, the United States, their modus operandi with the Pentagon, the contractors, their operations throughout the NATO Alliance . . . and against their pact brothers.

  Sweetman had not been interested in the responses. By the time the military vein had been fully bled, the attaché had unwound to a point where their conversations went beyond the world of military hardware. Sweetman drew him out, his personal impressions from the years in Washington, the pressures of surveillance by his own embassy, the Soviets, the Americans. The questions turned to his ties with the American community, with the bloc embassies, the scarcity of home leave, the children held hostage in Prague, the eternal shortage of money, even for time off in the States.

  “Vacations; where did you and your wife go?”

  “Car trip . . . trailer . . . to New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine one year. The Soviet cruise ship the next . . .”

  “Cruise ship, really? . . . always wanted to do that myself . . . from where to where?”

  “Baltimore, the Caribbean, Jamaica, time ashore for shopping, touring, Grenada, back to Baltimore.” The attaché and Sweetman relived the cruise, retraced it to the return trip in American waters. The ship had been scheduled to dock at six A.M. The Czech and his wife had cursed this typical Soviet stupidity. A great to-do had been made of the night of farewell entertainment. There had been heavy drinking, loud music—American guitar, rock-’n-roll style—and there had been the usual rigid Soviet organization, no one permitted on the open decks, everyone in a preassigned ballroom.

  The Czech recalled having felt the ship slow at one point, a very definite change in motion. He had tried to step outside, but his way had been barred. He had been told the crew was preparing for the docking, that the decks were not safe.

  Subsequent interviews with Chesapeake Bay pilots who had worked the Omsk had revealed that the ship was the usual lousy Soviet construction. She had propulsion problems; machinery trouble had repeatedly forced her to cut back speed. The engine room had always managed some sort of repair, but it was a regular occurrence. None of the pilots liked to work her. More times than not the trouble would hit just short of port, upper bay, north of the Bay Bridge.

  Then, the complaint of a Chester River resident had made its way from the Centreville police, to the FBI, into Sweetman’s reading folder. The resident had been returning from a weekend’s sail to Crisfield. In the middle of the night he had come across one of the Pioneer Point cabin cruisers, out in the bay, beyond the mouth of the Chester River, in clear violation of the well-publicized government-to-government understanding on the recreational area permitted to the Soviets.

  A tidy operation. Sweetman had slowly massaged his head at the moment of revelation. The challenge was to pin the charge and make it stick, trap them in the act. The KGB was using the Omsk, as probably only her skipper and the KGB agents aboard knew, to run their agents from a westward bound transfer at Kingston to the next transfer underway at night from the Omsk to Pioneer Point. Once inside the diplomatic shelter of the country retreat, the Soviet agents were able to hitch the next embassy convoy back to Washington, or to fade directly from Pioneer Point into the U.S. countryside. The entire network was just as smooth on the flip side . . . exfiltration, very tidy.

  “Time check?”

  “Estimate fourteen minutes, thirty seconds. Revere Three has visual contact.” The communicator answered Sweetman as the big man reemerged on the catwalk.

  “Jesus Christ, hot in there—estimated speed?”

  “Revere Two reports ten knots and slowing. Estimate eight knots at contact.”

  Two double lengths of black line were flaked along the catwalk, running from the far protective shelters to the center where Sweetman stood. Each line was fitted with a metal coupling for the breastplate, and each coupling had been crafted with a motorcycle-grip handbrake, to permit Sweetman to control the payout of the lines.

  The calculations had been checked against the shipping passing beneath the bridge during the past two weeks. With no outward bound bay traffic, and none was expected at the hour of contact, each of the ships heading up the bay had, as anticipated, steered directly for the three vertical white lights marking the precise center of the main channel’s suspension span.

  The catwalk winches feeding Sweetman’s lines were set two hundred feet apart. He would make his drop facing south toward the oncoming Omsk. He would have fifteen seconds from the time Revere Three reported her bows passing beneath the eastbound span until she would reach him, then five seconds to complete the descent. He would begin his drop at the thirty-second mark, sliding left or right to position himself over her track, brake his fall mast-high until he was clear of the bridge, mast and midships stack, then drop to the port side of the lifeboat deck. If he missed that, to the main deck aft.

  “Six minutes. Revere Three confirms target on centerline track. Revere Four standing by.”

  “What do we hear from Omsk?” Sweetman’s smile flashed white in his blackened face.

  “Revere Two, Revere Three confirm decks clear.”

  “Yeah? There’ll be some bastards down there, sleepy sailor-boy bastards from Odessa—not so sleepy KGB bastards out to give their buddy boys a good-luck swat on the ass.”

  At the two-minute mark he stood poised on the catwalk, tongue running over his lips in anticipation, eyes on the growing lights of the cruise ship. At thirty seconds, he stepped into space, held just below the span until he steadied, dropped fifty feet braking to the right, then held again, staring down the throat of the Omsk.

  The eight knots seemed like fifty. He caromed off a lifeboat and fell to the deck ripping at the release bar which sent both lines silently back into the night. He rolled twice. His arm struck; his chin smacked a deck cleat and he spun to a stop.

  “Mother of Christ!” He rolled further into the shadow of a lifeboat, pulled back his hood and lay still to listen, gain his bearings.

  A galley ventilator was exhaling the warm, thick smells of food and grease. The stack was forward, well forward; he had just made the lifeboat deck. His eyes shifted to the fading necklace of lights marking the Bay Bridge’s westbound span. There were two routes to the starboard side, aft around the open deck or midships through the passageway dividing the ship’s officers’ country. He felt the change in the Omsk’s motion, a slow, gentle roll as she continued to lose way. He had calculated five minutes from landing to transfer of agents. Deck clear. He was on his feet, held for half a second at the passageway, was through it and flat against the bulkhead on the starboard side.

  He pressed his head and hands back hard against the metal, his good ear straining to interpret the metallic scraping of footsteps . . . behind him, on the interior ladder. Sweetman crossed the deck in two leaps and crouched against the rail behind a heap of drums, life jackets, and other unstowed lifebo
at supplies. His hands ran over his gear . . . his chin? He licked two fingers; not much blood, no trail. Within seconds a flashlight beam appeared aft, angled forward in a bouncing path preceding the footsteps.

  Sleepy sailor bastard. Sweetman stayed low, the whipsteel blackjack in his left hand. Come on buddy boy, come on; don’t blow the main show.

  At the passageway, the footsteps stopped, and the beam played forward in disinterested fashion. The light vanished; Sweetman tensed, ready to strike the white uniform moving closer to the rail. For Christ’s sake! He’s taking a leak! Better watch it buddy boy. Get your KGB buddies wet and . . .

  The uniform disappeared, the metallic scraping of feet fading into the heart of the ship. Sweetman checked his cameras. The fast click of each shutter and the whir of the motorized film winds told him both were set. He returned them to the pouch, climbed through the rail, shook the tethered line free from the breastplate base. With the line, he lashed himself to the rail, tested, then with the arms free and feet braced against the deck edge, he hung out over the ship at a forty-five-degree angle, surveying the white-and-black wall of the Omsk’s starboard hull.

  Nothing. But, the ship was barely moving now, no more than two knots. The lights cast by the passenger-deck portholes on the port side were nonexistent on the starboard. The hull aft of the green running light was completely blacked out. One hell of a cruise. He ran his hands through the cameras’ wriststraps, waited.

  The muffled screech of metal on metal . . . a door slowly opened in the side of the hull, no light, close to the waterline. A thump . . . cargo netting banging against the hull. The embassy’s Pioneer Point cabin cruiser appeared suddenly, running in from the east, darkened, in a sweep that would bring her alongside from the stern. A volley of electronic shutter clicks recorded her approach.

  The Soviets worked swiftly. No lines were passed. With fenders over the side, the cabin cruiser was held to the Omsk by her rudder as they coasted up the Bay. A figure emerged from the boat’s cabin, heaved one bag, then another, up into the ship, reached for the cargo netting, and started the short climb.

  Look up, you bastard. The clicks continued. Flash some steel teeth, authenticity, buddy boy. Sweetman dangled like a misplaced bowsprit over the transfer. Two, three, five, six bags were dropped to the cabin cruiser and passed below. The first of the new agents started down the netting. His fedora knocked against the netting and disappeared between the hulls. The soft, laughing curse floated up to Sweetman. Not so fast, boys, not so fast. He switched cameras and recorded the second and third agents as they made the transfer.

  The darkened hulls parted. The tremor from the increasing turns in the Omsk’s shaft vibrated in the railing. Sweetman eased back onto the boat deck, stowed the cameras in the belly pouch, cut the chest tether, and took off at a run. Others would have felt the increase in speed. It would have stirred the curious among the passengers even in the dead of night; security would ease now.

  At the stern end of the boat deck, he skirted the companionway, scissor-kicked the railing, and dropped down the crew’s access ladder two rungs at a time. Racing aft on the main deck, his feet shot out from under him. He hit hard on his elbows; a shuffleboard puck skidded away. Light, laughter; the door to the main deck lounge had been opened. Up over the fantail rail without breaking stride, he leapt feet-first the thirty feet down into the bay. Beacons triggered, he treaded water awaiting Revere Four.

  Sweetman was barely asleep at mid-morning when the telephone call came from the executive assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. Pierce Bromberger received the call one minute later at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he had just arrived to instruct a six-week course in the political dimensions of terrorism.

  Bromberger had scheduled the first class for Memorial Day, a national holiday, to capture their attention and dramatize the urgency of the task. Chalk in hand, he interrupted his talk to take the telephone call slip from the army private who had creaked her way across the wooden barracks floor in her stiff, issue shoes.

  “Gentlemen. I will have to take this.” He waved the yellow slip at them. “You have on the board the first halting steps we have taken as nations to provide a legal framework for combatting terrorism. In Civil Aviation:

  “The Tokyo Convention, the Hague Convention”—he touched each chalked line as he spoke—“the Montreal Convention, each aimed at the hijacking dimension.

  “In parallel, as the diplomatic community came under siege, the OAS Convention, and the UN Convention on Crimes Against International Protected Persons. This all in your textbook; damned dry stuff, but worth the effort—if only in that it is revealing in terms of international laxity, the traditional hesitancy of independent states to work together no matter how vicious the challenge. Study these different convention texts. You’ll find there’s not so much meat in them. An understanding of the timidity and ineffectiveness of the international community is a basic prologue to the heart of our work together over the next six weeks. That’s it until tomorrow morning.” He gave the chalk a professional flip onto the blackboard tray, surprising himself, strode out of the barracks with the young soldier in his wake, took the call, and before noon was on a CIA Jetstar.

  Pierce Bromberger looked older than his late forties. He brushed his thin, graying hair straight back from his face, accentuating the darting eyes, beaked nose, and gaunt physique. Bromberger had grown up in and around prisons, the second son of a Tennessee state trooper who had risen through the ranks to become chief of state prisons. Prison rumor, gossip, information—intelligence—had been dinner-table talk, beer-and-cigars talk between his father and the stream of officers always flowing through the family’s homes, for as long as he could remember. When he headed out on his own, it was preordained that he would get into the business in some form or other.

  The formal language of Washington’s growing breed of terrorism bureaucrats was a tongue he had only recently acquired. The world of the terrorist, however, was in the marrow of his bones. He had built his career in operations, in the field in Asia, then Europe, Asia, Latin America, then Asia again in a grinding existence which had thrown him against assassins, agents, murderers—the dark creatures the world now lumped as terrorists.

  The van that met him on the far taxiway on Andrews Air Force Base was new to Bromberger, dented, faded yellow with a brown script “Trade—Marketplace, Inc.” on the side. The route was familiar enough—parkway, across the Anacostia River, then the freeway. But, instead of continuing on across the Potomac to Langley, they swung right at the 7th Street ramp and headed into downtown Washington.

  “Hoover Building?”

  “No sir”—the young agent driving the van looked to Bromberger like a Cuban, but his voice was straight, flat Ohio—“close enough.” The van turned again, north on 11th Street. Bromberger admired the white marble front of the old Evening Star Building, now an armed forces recruiting center. On the east side, a string of rundown two, three, four, and five-storied buildings ran saw-toothed up the street, some with windows boarded or painted over, a flotsam and jetsam of city retailing—liquor, wigs, donuts, girlie shows, ears pierced, uniforms, breakfast and lunch joints, lofts, maternity wear, costume jewelry, and walk-up hotels.

  “I’ll keep your bag. Second floor; you’re expected, sir.”

  “Thanks for the lift, Ohio.” The driver frowned. Bromberger yanked his tan flight bag from the van, glanced at the dilapidated gray-black entryway with its adjoining cellar steps offering Italo-Hungarian cuisine, and crossed the sidewalk. The prominent creases in his thin, lined face deepened as he headed up the stairway. At the eighteenth step, he arrived on an abbreviated landing ending in a gray metal fire door which slid sideways, opening as he approached, revealing a musty, empty corridor ending twenty-five feet beyond at a second fire door.

  The first door thudded closed behind him. “Good afternoon, Mr. Bromberger. Please come in.” The voice, from a hidden speaker, extended the greeting. The second door slid open.


  “Christ, Hanspeter! What the hell are you doing here? What the hell am I doing here?” The two agents bear-hugged.

  “Haven’t a clue, Pierce. I answered the great man’s summons, and I have been cooling my heels with Mr. Fisker, here, I gather awaiting your arrival. How about it, Harold. What are you getting us into in this den of yours, hard porn . . . ?”

  Harold Fisker’s lips were shut, but working hard, rolling two cough drops around his mouth. A small, flushed chipmunk of a man with tinted orange hair, he ignored Sweetman’s question, flicked a switch beneath one of the closed-circuit television monitors at his desk, then pecked briefly at the word processor console.

  “Mr. Sweetman, Mr. Bromberger, I have been instructed by the director’s office to show you the spaces you have been assigned.” He shuffled to the far side of the reception room, which was cluttered with stacks of publications, newsletters, tabloids, market reports, flyers, and cardboard folders with swatches of cloth and rug samples. “The console keyboard activates the wall switch.” He gave a little whistle as he pushed on a section of the wall which swung on a center pivot, then led them up a single step into a large inner room.

  “Lead seal in the entry, false floor, lowered ceiling, double walls. Not bad, Harold; you’ve got the makings of a good carpenter . . . comm center, eh . . . not bad.”

  The little man shot a quick glance at Bromberger in reply, popped another lozenge into his mouth, and proceeded to a large, multi-screen tan console running the entire length of one wall. “Communications and data terminals here. The entire system switches through headquarters. Your location will not be known to the operators or those servicing your requests—Washington area, no more. You should reveal no more. Facsimile machines here . . . this for open transmissions, and this, encrypted. There is a small lounge—”

  “Cut the crap, Fisker, for Christ’s sake.” Sweetman was tired; his words had a sharp edge. Fisker continued on unperturbed.