Bearpit

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘But it sounds …’ Willick began and then stopped, nervous of offending the other man. ‘… strange,’ he picked up. ‘Artificial.’

  ‘How it sounds is no concern of yours,’ said Belov dismissively. ‘Learn it.’

  The two men sat opposite each other for another hour until Belov was satisfied that Willick was familiar enough with the statement to utter it as if the views were his own and not as a recitation prepared by someone else. His valeted clothes were returned just before a lunch of cold, unidentified meats and boiled cabbage and potatoes. Belov refused Willick either booze or wine, reminding the American he was going to be prescribed a drug and that he needed to retain a clear head.

  The doctor arrived unannounced as they were finishing the meal. He gave Willick a cursory examination and then tapped out three orange tablets from a sweet-shop array in the case he carried with him. He watched while Willick took them and said something in Russian to Belov.

  To the American Belov said: ‘He says you are actually going to enjoy it.’

  Belov led the way from the suite to the waiting car of the previous night. The streets were definitely busier but there seemed to be a reserved central lane along which they travelled again at a very high speed. A lot of the buildings were squatly monolithic, like Washington; at one junction, where they had to slow, Willick looked to his left and thought he saw the walled Kremlin and the oriental tips of St Basil’s Cathedral, with the vast square in front. The drug began to work, the sensation at first unsettling but very quickly not disturbing at all. Willick was absolutely conscious of where he was and what he was going to do and what he had to say – large tracts of the statement came easily to mind – but there was none of the hollow-stomached fear he knew so well. He actually felt confident: eager, even. He was important, admired.

  They entered the quadrangle of a huge, square building through gates that opened and closed immediately, and at once dipped into a long, darkened tunnel, from which they emerged into an inner courtyard. Willick followed Belov through a small door beyond which waited four men who were identified without name as the people who would help him through the press conference.

  ‘Aren’t you going to be with me?’ Willick asked Belov.

  ‘I’ll be waiting,’ said the Russian.

  The journalists were already assembled when they moved on to the stage. The moment Willick appeared the television lights burst on and there were flashes from still cameras, and Willick found it difficult to see beyond the glare, to establish how many people there were wanting to interview him. From the noise, it seemed a lot.

  A thin bespectacled man whom he’d met at the entrance unnecessarily introduced Willick (‘a brave American’) and announced he had a statement to make. Willick cleared his throat, looking directly out to where he believed the television cameras were placed, and delivered the prepared speech perfectly, consulting the sheet occasionally but more frequently staring directly out at the journalists. The effect of the pills strangely seemed to make it possible for him to hear himself, as he talked: he knew he sounded calm and forceful. He enunciated the sentences upon which Belov had been most insistent with his eyes unblinkingly out into the room.

  There was an immediate babble of questions when Willick stopped. The thin man held up his hands, quieting the uproar, pointing to individuals whom the American still had difficulty in isolating.

  ‘How long have you been a spy?’ was the question and unprompted the Russian alongside cupped his hand over the microphone and leaned sideways to Willick.

  ‘It is not a sudden decision for me to come to the Soviet Union,’ recited Willick, grateful for the prompt. ‘It is a process that has taken some time.’

  ‘That’s not an answer,’ protested the questioner but the Russian was already selecting someone else.

  ‘Have you told the Soviets of your work within the CIA?’

  ‘I have already outlined in my statement how I regard the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency,’ replied Willick, guided again. The pills made him feel fantastic: he wondered if it would be possible to get some more.

  ‘Haven’t you endangered the lives of fellow Americans by what you have done?’

  ‘The Central Intelligence Agency endangers the lives of fellow Americans’ was the prepared reply.

  ‘Do you regard yourself as a traitor?’

  ‘I regard myself as someone driven by despair, at what I know, forced to speak out.’ Willick thought that sounded good, if a little melodramatic.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Openly, by aeroplane.’ Willick hadn’t needed help that time.

  ‘Did your recent divorce have anything to do with your decision to defect?’

  Willick supposed they would have delved into his background but the question surprised him. ‘Nothing whatsoever,’ he said. Who would Eleanor get her alimony from now!

  ‘Do you have any involvement with anyone here, in Moscow?’

  ‘No.’ Another question he found easy.

  ‘Were you blackmailed into defecting?’

  The thin man came sideways but Willick was confident enough to reply by himself. ‘Certainly not,’ he said.

  ‘What evidence do you have – can you give us – about the claims you’ve made about the CIA?’

  Willick listened attentively to the whispered advice and said: ‘That is a demand that should be made by the American people to the CIA. And admitted by the CIA.’

  ‘What did you mean by the remark about others in the Agency feeling like you … that you will not be the last to expose the evils of the CIA?’

  The assistance was immediate and Willick said: ‘I do not feel able to expand any further upon that remark. I think it speaks for itself.’

  Willick was searching the blur of faces, enjoying himself like the doctor had promised, but the thin man rose abruptly, cupping his hand beneath the American’s elbow to bring him up as well, and led him away to a cacophony of protests.

  ‘I’m prepared to go on,’ protested Willick.

  ‘We’re not,’ said the man.

  The American television networks only showed edited highlights, of course, but using the State Department as a front the Crisis Committee obtained complete transcripts from CBS and NBC and from their own wire services they got a full transcript from Associated Press.

  ‘We’ve got a wholesale fucking disaster on our hands,’ judged Harry Myers.

  It was an assessment confirmed within two days, when KGB-supplied names of Central Intelligence Agency personnel whom Willick had identified were published in left-wing newspapers and magazines in Spain, France and West Germany.

  In Bonn the deputy head of the station was assassinated by a group claiming to be the Red Army faction.

  Petr Levin felt physically limited in his frustration, as if he were enclosed in some sort of straitjacket. He wanted so badly to let Natalia know she had not been abandoned in Moscow. And that it would not be long now before he was with her. And it wouldn’t be long. He’d made the checks carefully over several days and knew that having dropped him off at school the CIA driver did not hang around Litchfield but returned to the house. Which meant he was unescorted for six hours: six whole hours, to get to New York! They’d never even miss him, until it was too late. Petr knew he’d been equally clever discovering the necessary railway route, disputing it with a girl called Janie who thought he was interested in her until to prove an apparent argument she brought him the timetable of the New Haven Line which actually set out the stations. Not quite sure which one yet. Waterbury, maybe. Or Naugatuck. Then straight south and right into Grand Central. He would be able to walk to the United Nations in minutes.

  Petr grimaced up through his bedroom window at the noise of the patrolling helicopter, catching a faraway sight of one of the armed patrols. Was there really a Soviet assassination search going on for his father, like they all said? They seemed to be taking it seriously enough. But then they seemed permanently to take themselves seriously.
What would he say, if the Russians at the United Nations asked him where his father was? Tell them, he thought at once. He was a traitor, wasn’t he? His father had deserted Natalia, so he couldn’t love her, despite all the shit that he did. Couldn’t love any of them. Deserved all that was coming to him. Even to be killed.

  The boy returned to his letter, bored with the emptiness of it. He scribbled a few more lines, describing the widow’s walk he could see from the schoolroom window and then recounted, because he thought it was funny, that the locals called the rock that was everywhere not granite, but ledge, and signed off as he always did that he hoped to see her soon, hoping she would read into the last line what he really meant it to convey.

  And it would be soon, he told himself again, in familiar litany. Very soon now.

  32

  With desperate hopefulness the CIA attempted a damage assessment by expanding the Crisis Committee, not at executive level but administratively. Everything upon which John Willick had ever worked or been associated with was computer located, withdrawn from records and subjected to the most intensive scrutiny. And then independently double checked, to confirm or challenge that first analysis of likely or unlikely harm. The three original members remained in permanent session and in permanent occupation of the ground-floor room in which they had interviewed Yevgennie Levin, whose debriefings were temporarily suspended on account of the assessment priority. Because of the urgency, the reports were delivered individually, immediately they were released after the second clearance, and with each arrival the despondency of the three men worsened.

  ‘You know what I think?’ demanded Myers, not wanting an answer. ‘I don’t think we’re ever going to be able fully to estimate how much injury the bastard’s caused.’

  ‘A lot,’ said Norris in agreement. ‘Incalculable.’

  ‘He was employed for fifteen years,’ reminded Crook-shank. ‘We’re going to have to assume he let the Soviets have everything, throughout those fifteen years.’

  ‘We might as well shut up shop and put the Boy Scouts in charge of external intelligence,’ said the security chief bitterly. He guessed he was being retained because he had been involved in the inquiry from the start, but expected to be retired when the committee made their eventual report to the Director. And then what the fuck was he expected to do, become a nightman at some all-night store? After watching Willick’s Moscow press conference he’d physically thrown up in the toilet, sick to his stomach.

  ‘We’ve got to set ourselves guidelines,’ argued Norris, refusing absolute dejection. ‘We know from the bank records and from what we found in Rosslyn that Willick was hopelessly in debt. And from the interview with the wife that those debts became practically impossible after their divorce, because of the alimony he had to pay.’

  ‘So?’ demanded Crookshank.

  ‘So, from those bank records we know he had a credit balance until late 1984,’ reminded Norris. ‘That’s when, according to the wife, he began gambling on the stock market to make up for losses at the track. And when, because of their money problems, the arguments began and got so bad she decided to leave him. Which increased his money problems after they got divorced.’

  ‘And Aleksandr Shelenkov arrived here in Washington in July, 1985!’ remembered Myers in belated awareness.

  ‘Why couldn’t Willick have had a control before Shelenkov?’ demanded Crookshank. ‘He certainly had one afterwards because Shelenkov was moved before Willick’s shift to Records. And we know from what happened in Spain and France and West Germany that he’s been identifying agents left, right and centre.’

  ‘We don’t,’ agreed Norris. ‘But the financial difficulties fit the pattern.’

  ‘I think it’s too speculative,’ said the lawyer.

  ‘Maybe it’s a question for Levin,’ said Norris.

  ‘There’s a barrel of questions for Yevgennie Levin,’ said Myers.

  ‘I think the agent identification is the most serious aspect,’ said Norris. ‘As of this morning we’ve had to recall a total of thirty-eight men from overseas postings.’

  ‘And we still don’t know how many more he’s fingered,’ said Myers. ‘Christ, I’d like to get my hands on the fucker! I’d kill him. I really mean I’d kill him.’

  ‘I think there is something equally serious,’ ruminated Crookshank, customarily consulting his notepad against the reports stacked up alongside each of them. ‘Maybe more so.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Norris.

  ‘Levin told us of some conversation with Shelenkov involving Soviet space installations. And Kapalet in Paris said the same thing,’ reminded the lawyer. ‘And we know from backtracking on Willick’s work thus far that when he was in Analysis that was his speciality.’

  ‘So it fits,’ said Norris.

  ‘Sure it fits,’ agreed the lawyer. ‘It fits and it means a lot of things. That Shelenkov wasn’t boasting when he said he had us by the balls, because Moscow will know precisely how many of their sites and silos we’ve located by satellite and precisely how we’ve designated then. And that they can move them and make everything we know – every Star War assessment – not worth a bucket of spit. And that both Levin and Kapalet are guaranteed, one hundred per cent reliable informants.’

  ‘What else?’ prompted Myers.

  ‘We’ve heard a lot, too, from both of them about Latin America and the Caribbean,’ said Crookshank, in further reminder.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ said Myers, realizing. ‘Oh Jesus H. Christ!’

  ‘Nowhere, in any file so far considered or double checked, has there been anything connecting Willick with Latin America or the Caribbean,’ acknowledged Norris, understanding too.

  Myers pulled forward the tattered, over-handled Associated Press transcipt of Willick’s press conference. ‘I know, within the Agency, there are others who feel as I do. That I am not, nor will be, the last to try to expose the Agency for the evil that it is,’ he quoted.

  ‘He as good as told us, in his reply to the later question,’ came in Norris, taking up his own copy. ‘When he was asked what he meant by that he said he did not feel able to expand further; that it spoke for itself.’

  ‘It does, doesn’t it?’ said Crookshank. ‘Unless, in something we haven’t yet seen, there’s an assignment connecting Willick to Latin America or to the Caribbean then we know that Willick wasn’t the only KGB source, within the Agency. That there’s someone else still buried deep somewhere here at Langley.’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ said Myers, who genuinely didn’t.

  ‘We’ve got to think about it,’ said the lawyer. ‘We’ve got to think about it being a practical possibility and not imagine it’s over, by Willick’s defection.’

  ‘Thank God for Kapalet and Levin,’ said Myers.

  ‘They’re the best chance we’ve got,’ agreed Norris.

  There was nothing in the KGB file that had been made available to him – the file he anyway instinctively felt to be incomplete – connecting the defector Yevgennie Levin with the American paraded at the Moscow press conference, but Yuri wondered if there had been any association. Not that it would have helped him to find Levin. Very little seemed to be helping him to locate the man. His central graph connecting the exchanging letters had started out so promising – too promising, upon reflection – but all he had now were incomprehensible phrases and expressions, followed by a growing number of frustrated question marks. There was an additional one, after the reference to a widow’s walk which had appeared in the latest communication from Petr to his sister and which Yuri had ringed and joined to captain’s walk, the phrase which had appeared in Levin’s first letter. And an additional unknown, also from Petr’s letter. When he’d read the word Yuri had felt a spurt of excitement. Looking up ‘ledge’ in two separate and unabridged dictionaries, he’d been unable to find in either it being used to describe granite, which seemed to be the commonest rock along the entire eastern seaboard. According to the geological gazetteer, which he’
d also consulted, the island of Manhattan was just one solid block of it.

  If Kazin’s move against him were to be made through an accusation of professional incompetence it could not be long coming, Yuri guessed. He wished that, in those bank-vaulted dossiers, there were something he could regard as a defence, instead of just more sheets of paper with more question marks upon them.

  Although he’d studied the letters and his charts until his eyes ached – until, he feared, he was so familiar with it all that he risked missing something of significance even if it were there – Yuri again poured over them in the 53rd Street apartment, with an hour before Caroline was due to arrive home. This time he started out from the very beginning, querying his own notes, and almost at once stopped, aware of a possible oversight. He’d assessed so much from the punctuality and until now not realized how differently it could be used! Maybe he was guilty of professional incompetence!

  ‘Eight days,’ said Caroline, later, after they’d eaten the meal she’d prepared in her own apartment.

  ‘What’s eight days?’ he said.

  ‘How long since you’ve had an assignment. And how long I’ve been able to have you to myself. I think it’s great.’

  ‘It won’t last,’ predicted Yuri.

  It didn’t.

  33

  The letter from Natalia arrived the following day, giving Yuri an earlier than expected opportunity to test the idea he’d had. He read it, deciding at once there was nothing of importance, but still took a copy for his files before re-sealing it. The mission official whose duty it was to liaise with the Americans over the correspondence was a Ukrainian named Votrin who was not a member of the KGB but who knew that Yuri was, and listened with nervous attention to the instructions he was given.

  Yuri wanted the response from someone senior, in direct contact with Levin, so – aware from the correspondence and of his meeting with the girl how much it mattered – he ordered Votrin to relay that in addition to a letter there was some reaction from Moscow to Natalia’s exit request. And that it had to be collected from the UN building. David Proctor came personally.