Jack in the Box

by John Weisman

  Semonov washed down the foie gras with champagne. “Y’know,” he said, “I don’t understand how I can eat like this every day and not put on weight. I don’t even exercise, Richard. If I ate like this back in Moscow, I’d look like a sumo wrestler.”

  “It must be the water.”

  “Water?” Semonov cocked an eyebrow. “Never touch the stuff.”

  ‘Then it’s all the walking.”

  Semonov’s eyes twinkled. “Perhaps.” He paused. “Whatever it is, I don’t care. I love this city, Richard. It has become more of a home to me than Moscow ever was.”

  “I’m happy for you, Alexei.” Sam’s peripheral vision caught her as she came through the door: a young Chinese woman so beautiful it was frightening. She was fragile as Ming porcelain; dressed simply in monochromatic Chanel and accented by multicolored Hermès. The maître d’ treated her with great deference, seating her at a prime window table and immediately producing a half-liter carafe of red wine.

  Semonov’s French broke into Sam’s consciousness. “I find myself smiling as I walk the streets. I am thinking, ‘This is my city.’ You know how it is—you visit le Furet-Tanrade for des confitures, and they know you. You stop in at An-drouet for some cheese—and you are welcomed like a relative. Ah, Richard, Paris is like a small village to me. I know my neighbors, and I am known. It’s an incredible sensation.”

  Sam looked back across the room. The Chinese woman had shed her jacket. Underneath, she wore a sleeveless brown turtleneck that revealed beautiful arms bedecked with simple gold bracelets. Sam had to force himself to concentrate on the Russian. “I believe you, Alexei,” he said wistfully. It was the sort of emotional involvement with a city that he himself had never felt.

  Semonov filled their glasses. “I didn’t mean to sound bitter earlier.”

  “No offense taken.”

  “Good. Because in a way I’m happy things worked out as they did. I have a certain … arrangement … with the French. It is a good thing for me—and occasionally a good thing for them, too, if you understand.”

  Sam nodded but said nothing.

  “Especially with the current unpleasantness.”

  “Ah, that.”

  “If I were a Middle East specialist I would be a rich man,” Semonov said. “Keeping track of all the Saudis and their money-laundering schemes. And the others, too. Of course, I can help the French with some aspects of the problem. The Chechen angle, for example.” He looked at Sam and whispered conspiratorially, “Did you know that fully twenty-five percent of al-Qa’ida’s fighters are Chechens?”

  “I think I read something about that in the papers.”

  Semonov’s expression fell. “It is a fact.” The Russian scanned the room then nudged the plate in Sam’s direction. “You must try the foie gras,” he said insistently.

  Sam took a piece and tasted. It was perfect, and he said so.

  Semonov gave Sam a self-satisfied smile. “This bistro—it was a find of mine almost ten years ago. It has become quite popular lately. Hard to book a table.”

  “I bet it is.” Sam paused.

  “But for me …”

  Sam gave the Russian a reassuring glance. “Alexei—”

  Semonov’s head tilted in Sam’s direction.

  “The rumors …”

  The tired look in Semonov’s eyes told Sam the man didn’t want to talk about old business. But the Russian uttered a soft sigh, and said, “Yes?”

  “Of course there were rumors,” Semonov said, switching into Russian. “The KGB lost a large number of agents in the 1980s. The whole Walker ring. Others. You lose one, it is expected. Two, maybe. But three, four, half a dozen in a year and a half? That is called an anomaly, and it requires counterintelligence to do a thorough search.”

  “And?”

  “What was done precisely I don’t know. I was very junior and the bureaucracy at Lubyanka was not very trusting. But there were rumors that the First Directorate tasked its American agents to try to pinpoint the leak.” He paused. “That’s really all I know.”

  Sam, too, now spoke in Russian. “Northing more specific?”

  “Nothing.” Semonov took the last of the foie gras, wiped crumbs from his lips with the starched napkin, returned it to his lap, then drained the champagne. A waiter padded up to the table, removed the plate, and efficiently poured the two men more wine. Semonov waited until he’d left before resuming. “I can only repeat what I told you earlier,” he said, his lips barely moving. “There was a lot more gossip about a CIA mole in Moscow than there was about KGB moles in Washington.” The Russian sipped champagne. “In fact, more than one time I heard the name of Edward Lee Howard.”

  Sam blinked. “The CIA defector?”

  “Justement” Semonov inclined his head toward Sam, and put a hand up to mask his mouth from being seen and continued in Russian. “General Krassilnikov and even more, Kras-silnikov’s deputy—Colonel Klimov—never liked Howard. That I know for sure—because the general was my boss and he told me so more than once.”

  Major General Rem Krassilnikov had been Moscow Center’s relentless and uncompromising chief of counterintelligence. In the 1980s, using information supplied by the American traitors Ames, Hanssen, Nicholson, and others, he’d mounted a series of spectacular CI operations against both CIA and the Soviet spies working for the United States. By the end of the decade, America’s assets in the USSR had been decimated. Sam had met Krassilnikov once during his tour. The general had struck him as a dangerous man; a direct operational descendant of Dzerzhinsky, Beria, Andropov, and Chebrikov. A jowly, gray-haired True Believer with the piercing, steely-eyed gaze of a grand inquisitor.

  In his shadow was Valentin Klimov—a tall, ascetic-looking wraith with a leonine head of thick dark hair and the sharp white teeth of a predator. Klimov had been Rezident in Paris in the 1990s. He’d run double agents against Langley with some success. But these days Rem was retired and Klimov had come in out of the cold to take over FSB’s CI operations. He was, so rumors in Purgatory had circulated, the perfect CI chief: more intense than Angleton and crueler than Krassilnikov. It was even said that Klimov was tearing SVR apart from the inside, searching for the traitor who’d betrayed his priceless spies Ames, Nicholson, and Hanssen. Sam had never believed a word of it. His instincts told him the stories were disinformation. Active measures from Moscow Center. But by then he’d been banished to Purgatory. He was an Untouchable. No one at Langley listened to him anymore.

  The Russian polished off his wine, refilled his own glass, then drank it halfway down. “Urinal gossip was that Krassilnikov believed Howard was a deep-cover double—a mole. I’m told Klimov still does.”

  Ed Howard? A mole? It was inconceivable—it would have been an incredible operation to mount and sustain. Sam sipped his wine, then watched as Semonov topped both glasses off. “Why, Alexei?”

  The Russian drank again, emptying his glass. “It was a running gag: Rem Krassilnikov had spent so much time in the Second Department34 he took John Le Carré's novels seriously.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I am, Richard. It was rumored—half seriously—that Krassilnikov started to perceive Edward Howard as an American Alec Leamas. Whether that story was actually true or not I don’t know. I was pretty close to the bottom of the food chain in Moscow. But Krassilnikov and I were in the hallway once, and Howard passed us going the other way. Krassilnikov stopped, turned, pointed at Howard’s back, and whispered to me, ‘Alexei Alexandrovich, I believe it was Felix Dzerzhinsky who told the initial selection of Cheka officers, “The only trustworthy defector is a dead defector.” ‘ And it is undeniable fact that Krassilnikov had Howard transferred out of the Second Chief Directorate. ‘Banished’ was the word I heard. Reassigned into the First Chief Directorate, where he was ordered to make trouble for the Americans as a way of demonstrating fealty to our great Soviet motherland. Howard was trolling in Paris at about the time you and I first met, y’know.”

  “Was h
e.” Sam’s tone remained neutral.

  “I met with him once. He was looking to put a network of émigrés together.”

  “You never told me that, Alexei.”

  The Russian’s face grew sad. “I know. I should have. I think, Richard, that meeting with Howard was what made me flunk the polygraph.”

  Sam was stunned. “They asked you about Howard?”

  “The polygrapher spent most of the session asking me about my relationship with Ed Howard, about Howard’s relationship with Krassilnikov and Klimov, and about rumors of a KGB mole in Washington. I wasn’t much help on any of them, Richard.”

  Sam blinked. No one at Langley had ever filled him in on that little fillip. All he’d been told was that Semonov had flunked lunch and he was to be cut loose. Who the hell had tasked the polygrapher?

  “Besides,” the Russian continued, “Howard wasn’t even working for Second Chief Directorate at the time. Afterward, I told that to the case officer who oversaw the polygraph—I forget his name, but he was the one who was with you when we met.”

  O’Neill? O’Neill had run the flutter session? That was a surprise to Sam, because O’Neill had never mentioned it—not then, and certainly not since.

  “Whatever, it was irrelevant.” Semonov took a big swallow of the wine. “Howard wasn’t working counterintelligence in the early 1990s—he was out at Yasenevo.35 Putin brought him back to Lubyanka after he became head of FSB—over Klimov’s strenuous objections, I might add. But that was long after I left.”

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I—”

  “Yes?” Sam started to say he’d only recently heard exactly the opposite: that it was Putin who mistrusted defectors. But he’d forgotten where he’d heard it and he held his tongue. Besides, he was here to elicit, not to inform. And so, he elicited. “I tell you, Alexei, it sounds implausible to me.”

  “Perhaps. But it’s what I heard. And the gossip going around these days …”

  “Yes?”

  “The gossip is that Klimov’s more paranoid than Rem ever was. There were whispers after Putin’s support of Washington post-9/11 that Klimov told a few of his closest pals that Putin himself had been flipped by the Americans.” The Russian sighed deeply. ‘Try to make sense of that one, by God.”

  “Well, there were people in my shop who believe Clinton was a Chinese asset.”

  “But wasn’t he?” Semonov grinned. “I heard—”

  “Klimov, Alexei.” Sam brought the conversation back on track. “Klimov. Klimov didn’t like Edward Lee Howard, right?”

  They’d finished the champagne. A waiter brought a carafe of red wine. Semonov poured it himself, swirled the wine around the bowl, slurped noisily, then swallowed. “Klimov? Howard? I told you, Richard. Klimov didn’t like him at all. Hated him.” He filled Sam’s glass. “You’re going to like this. It’s a classified Bordeaux.”

  The Russian smiled at his little joke. When Sam didn’t appear to get it, Semonov gave him an earnest look and shifted into English and French. “A classified growth, Richard. A pun. Un jeu de mots. Un vin classé secret.” When Sam finally smiled, Semonov went back to Russian. “It’s a Graves to be precise, and a Y2K to boot—great vintage, Y2K. But Guy—that’s the owner—has it brought in as vin aux tonneaux.”

  Sam let the chaff about the wine go by him. So Klimov hated Edward Lee Howard. If that were true, it made Klimov a prime suspect in the mysterious deaths of Ed Howard—and Irina, too. Klimov had motive, means, and the opportunity to get them both out of the way. Sam caught Alexei’s anxious expression and realized he was meant to taste the wine. He sipped—and wasn’t disappointed. He couldn’t tell a Graves from a Pauillac or a St. Emilion, but he knew good wine when he drank it, and this was spectacular stuff. “Absolutely lovely, Alexei.”

  “Thank you.” The Russian broke off a piece of the brown Poilane bread, dipped it in the red wine, popped it in his mouth, chewed, then washed the bread down with a glug of red. “So that’s the Edward Lee Howard story as I heard it—except …”

  “Except?”

  The Russian’s face had become slightly flushed. He dabbed at his lips with the napkin. “I remember two other things. I had a dinner with an old friend. A colleague from the trade. Maybe five, six years ago. I don’t exactly recall. And the guy mentioned—he laughed about this—that when Putin brought Edward Howard back to Lubyanka, my friend said people in the Second Directorate told him you could hear Valentin Klimov screaming bloody murder about it from his office—even if you were sitting in the bottle.”36

  A female waiter—one of the few Sam had ever seen in a Paris restaurant—set a plate of salad in front of him. The baby lettuce leaves had been individually arranged so they resembled an open artichoke. The salad had been dressed in a walnut-oil dressing so pungent he’d smelled it before she’d even approached the table.

  Sam waited until she’d left. “And the second?”

  “Recent. I was told Howard was desperate.”

  “Desperate?”

  “After Putin became president he had other things to think about. Chechnya. Al-Qa’ida. Eleven September. The oligarchs. Oil and gas. Centimeter by centimeter, Klimov took over FSB. Once he’d concentrated his power, he marginalized Howard. It was death by a thousand cuts. Klimov took away his responsibilities one by one.” Semonov took a forkful of greens. “Klimov assigned Howard to an office so small a desk wouldn’t fit in it. No telephone either. Howard had a chair and a lamp.” He looked at Sam and grinned.

  “How recently was this?”

  “Six months ago I heard the story from someone still active, Richard, someone who still thinks of the United States as the ‘Main Adversary.’ Someone who still believes that Washington has a mole buried deep inside the Kremlin. This person told me Howard had become a bitter, bitter man. He was drinking a lot. And always looking for some way to get even with Klimov—ruin Klimov’s career.”

  “What did Howard have access to that might do that?”

  “Dunno.” Semonov punched the salad with his fork, shoved the greens in his mouth, and munched. “But I was reliably told Klimov cut him off from any sensitive material by the end of Y2K. By eleven September, he’d even revoked Howard’s clearances, my friend said.”

  “Why didn’t they just fire him?”

  Semonov chewed another forkful of salad, then smiled ruefully. “Your people fired Howard and look what it got them. I don’t think Klimov wanted a mirror image.”

  Sam stayed quiet.

  Finally, Semonov spoke. “It’s funny you should bring Edward Howard’s name up. I hadn’t thought about him for years. I read about his death—you have to admit he died under very strange circumstances, Richard—and I thought, well, Klimov caught the son of a bitch with his control officer and dealt with him once and for all.”

  Deflect. Redirect. Sidetrack. Sam disturbed the nicely arranged leaves with the tines of his fork. “Rem’s long retired, Alexei. Left the job in 1991. Meets with CIA veterans. Writes books. I don’t think he’d chase Howard down these days.”

  “Not Rem, Richard. Comrade Klimov. Besides, you know what they say at Moscow Center. They say retirement is just another form of cover. You say you’re retired. And yet here you are in Paris, wondering aloud whether Edward Lee Howard was a double.”

  Except that Sam hadn’t wondered aloud whether Ed Howard was a double. He hadn’t even brought Howard’s name up. He’d wanted to. But he’d asked instead about Russian moles. It was Alexei Alexandrovich Semonov who’d brought up Edward Lee Howard. And mentioned the American in the provocative context Sam hadn’t ever considered. And totally contradicted what Sam had reliably heard from … from … O’Neill. It had been O’Neill. On Sam’s birthday. At the Cosmos bar. And O’Neill had heard it from a source on Capitol Hill.

  Given the provenance, Semonov’s version appeared on the surface even more far-fetched. Still, Howard had defected on Bill Casey’s watch. Casey was a big-picture guy who loved ambitious operations. Could the Old Man have tried to pull
a Spy Who Came in from the Cold on Moscow?

  Knowing Casey’s OSS-born affinity for covert ops, anything was possible. Casey loved the black side. He’d even run a few covert ops himself—keeping everyone else out of the loop. But then Casey had died, abruptly. Sam knew how secretive Casey had been. What if the DCI had croaked without handing Ed Howard off to another control officer? Holy mother of God—that would have left Howard all alone. No one to run to. Nowhere to go. No one to trust.

  But it was all so unlikely. Howard’s defection had thrown CIA into real turmoil. He’d betrayed at least half a dozen of America’s top agents in Moscow. He’d handed the Soviets the denied area operations manual. And then, after more than a decade and a half of working for Moscow, the sudden redefection—going to Rand Arthur, no less. If Semonov was to be believed, Howard was a drunk. A bitter, marginalized drunk. That, at least, made sense out of Howard’s redefection. If that’s what it had in fact been.

  That was all on the one hand.

  And on the other hand? There are no coincidences. That’s what Howard had told him. Not a coincidence that he’d showed up at Rand Arthur’s. Not a coincidence that he’d demanded to see Sam. Not a coincidence that he’d fled back to Moscow—where he was murdered.

  Sam couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something … missing. Something hinky. He had the same bone-deep uneasiness he’d felt in Rand Arthur’s library listening to Ed Howard’s spiel. Dammit, Sam, you’re getting old. What the hell have you missed? They’re running a GAP on you—whoever they are—and so you can’t see what they’re up to. They’ve set a jack-in-the-box and they’re about to spring it.

  Sam had to close the goddamn GAR But how? The one thing he’d do when he got back to Washington was to call Charlotte Wells. She’d know how to decipher this mess. Charlotte and Sam had worked together in Purgatory. She was one of the originals. As a prim, eighteen-year-old Royal Air Corps secretary, Charlotte Harvey had been seconded to OSS during the buildup prior to the D-Day invasion. She worked for General Wild Bill Donovan himself, as well as a pair of Donovan’s young acolytes named Bill Casey and Richard Helms. After the war, she’d been swept off her feet by a young Jedburgh, a handsome mustachioed captain named Carl Wells. Donovan himself had been best man at their wedding. He’d also seen to it that Charlotte became an American citizen within eighteen months after she and Carl moved to Washington.