The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Bill Granger

  Fatso said, “I will tell you: I have made my report on you. Based on your answers.”

  McGee turned.

  “Is that right?”

  “It is so.”

  “Who you report to?”

  “It is forbidden—”

  Henry turned away. Boring. He’d rather watch the pedestrians. When you were on a working ship, standing on a deck in idleness, and you were in port, you watched the landlubbers the way a child will watch an anthill. They seem insignificant because they are limited by the edge of land that clings to the sea, whereas you are from the sea, which stretches across the world.

  The black Volvo pulled up opposite the ship on the wharf.

  Three men got out, front and back. Doors slammed, and the Volvo started away.

  Three men in black overcoats and black hats. McGee saw Fatso stiffen in his leather spy coat, and he made a guess. Not that it was so hard to guess.

  Henry leaned on the railing and looked down at the three men passing through the Helsinki port guard and then the guard at the hatchway.

  “Them,” Fatso said.

  “About time,” Henry said. He stretched, scratched at the hairs on his stubble and turned back to the cabin.

  They came in minutes later. The cabin was suddenly filled with bodies, and the air turned warm and moist.

  The men removed their overcoats, which shone with raindrops. They were sweating.

  Henry recognized the middle one immediately. He had hoped for it. It was Skarda come all the way from Moscow to do a deep inspection on him. Or maybe something else. He didn’t say a word, and the three men did not look at him until they had removed their outerwear.

  Skarda, the middle man, was gaunt, as though he had been sick for a long time. His face was pale, and his eyes were framed by wide, owlish glasses. He looked at Henry McGee and sat down in the chair previously occupied by the fat leather spy.

  The other two were big men. Maybe just beef, maybe not. Henry wasn’t sure.

  “Colonel McGee,” said Skarda.

  The greeting said a lot. His KGB rank. Said without irony.

  Henry McGee nodded.

  “I did not expect to see you so soon.”

  “Or ever,” Henry McGee said.

  The gaunt man did not respond. He opened a briefcase and took out a file. He was the only one in the room with paper on the table, and this made him superior.

  “The problem is in the order of things,” the gaunt man said. “You plan your escape from this Lewistown place. You are taken to Chicago. The Section agent in Chicago brings up the name of Skarda. You make your escape.”

  “It would sound less pat if it was you climbing down nine floors on the side of a goddamn skyscraper like one of those clowns in an old movie.”

  English again. The gaunt man looked up and then turned to his colleagues and the fat spy. “Leave us,” Skarda said.

  The three men obediently left the cabin and closed the hatch.

  “What went wrong the first time?”

  “I got snookered. The same man. Agent named Devereaux in R Section. The son of a bitch just didn’t ever believe me. I never counted on him to pull an illegal. He arranged to kidnap me more than two years ago out of that interrogation camp in Maryland and damn near killed me. He got it on tape, and there I was, trussed like a Christmas turkey. Got fifty years in prison. But you know that.”

  “Yes,” said the gaunt man. He had dark hair and a mole on his cheek and looked a little like later portraits of Lincoln, except he was beardless. “We made our inquiries about all you said. The problem is in what to believe; there is always too much information.”

  He looked at his file folder and placed a delicate hand on the paper.

  “Devereaux,” he said.

  McGee stared right through him.

  “In a matter you do not know about, Devereaux plays his assigned part. He is in Brussels—he was in Brussels at last report—to guard the life of this woman, Rena Taurus.”

  “I don’t know a thing about her.”

  “The choice is to bring you back to Moscow. Quickly. Or, perhaps, more slowly, in stages.”

  Henry McGee said nothing. He waited with a cool expression on his face.

  “It is my decision,” the other said. “We had to meet you again to be certain you did not compromise the plan when you were… an American prisoner.”

  “And quickly means I get squished like a bug in Moscow. And slowly means I get to work on the plan,” Henry said. “Why not just say it plain like that?”

  “Some in Moscow Center feel you have compromised it.”

  “And you?”

  “I reserve judgment.” He tented his fingers. “They asked you about Plan Skarda, didn’t they?”

  “They transferred me out of a sardine tin I was gonna escape from.”

  “I’m sorry we spoiled your plans.”

  “You did? You spoiled them?”

  “We planted… a message. If the Americans knew of Skarda, the plan named for me, they would not react. They reacted, Henry. It saves your life.”

  “I sure am glad, Skarda.”

  “Yes,” said the thin man.

  “Skarda was supposed to be the Czech computer genius of Moscow Center. You, in other words.”

  “And the name of the plan. Plan Skarda. To once and for all compromise American intelligence to the point where it would take a decade to put it back together again.”

  “I was supposed to work on R Section,” Henry said. He relaxed now. He was beginning to understand. “I laid down a trail for Section, and they got jittery looking for me because I had moled them once and they were afraid it’d get out. Sent that asshole Devereaux after me, but Devereaux wouldn’t play my game, wouldn’t let me kidnap him in Alaska and float him to the Soviet side of the Bering Strait.”

  “So we assumed. Of course, at that point you could have betrayed Moscow,” Skarda said.

  “Yeah. Made such a good deal with Section they got me twenty-five to fifty in federal prison. I’m a lot smarter than that, Skarda.”

  It had almost worked two years before, the plan to compromise R Section, make Washington believe the bureaucracy was riddled with moles and traitors from Hanley on down. All by “defecting” Devereaux to the Soviet Union against his will while he was on the trail of the mole, Henry McGee, whom everyone had thought dead and buried.

  “You failed once, Henry,” Skarda said. “But you did not betray Plan Skarda.”

  “I didn’t know the whole thing—”

  “But you could have guessed, given them a trail to follow. To save your life and keep you from prison—”

  “But I didn’t, did I?”

  “Do you want to know what the second part of the plan is?” The smug Czech leaned back in his chair as though entertaining a class full of awed undergraduates. Henry kept the half-smile of friendliness on his face and just waited.

  “A recent ‘superpowers’ conference in Sweden. There was a secret agenda.”

  “There always is,” Henry McGee said. He knew enough about how these things worked.

  Skarda frowned him to silence. “The Americans have been made aware of our advances in securing our computer files. They cannot raid us as thoroughly anymore from their equipment in the American embassy. They do not understand the software technology that I have perfected. What if, in the spirit of glasnost, we were to offer them the technology in exchange for lesser funding for SDI program?”

  “For Star Wars,” Henry said. He thought about it. “They wouldn’t trust you.”

  “Oh. I assure you. This is above the board. They can examine the program. They can test it in their computer systems. I assure you of this.”

  “I’m assured,” Henry said. What was this leading to?

  “The files of the Central Intelligence Agency are completely computerized now and interconnected with the files of the great Western intelligence agencies. Let us presume that in their testing, all went well. They would keep testing and begin to sh
are their results with their allied agencies. And then, one fine day in spring, the virus in the program, hidden in the sequential configurations of the program, would destroy most of their system, their records, their abilities to recall their records from ghost files, the memory of CIA. Do you understand what memory is to intelligence?”

  “Like Alzheimer’s disease. Lack of memory makes intelligence helpless,” Henry McGee said.

  Skarda smiled. “Exactly. An apt simile. By which time, of course, the second part of the secret agenda would have been completed. An ancillary project to give the administration a bright eye to its public.”

  “A bright face,” Henry corrected.

  “So,” said Skarda, annoyed, “we will announce this shortly.”

  “What will you announce?”

  “To release the Jews. More than ever before. More than the forty-nine thousand of last year—many, many more in the name of glasnost and democratic freedom.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  Skarda smiled then. “That is the secret of the second part. The human part. The interference with our Baltic states by certain parties would have to be ended.… Well, it is not of as great importance as the first part.”

  “People never are,” Henry said, but he was smiling. His even white teeth sparkled in the dim light.

  Skarda suddenly ended his lecture. The class sat in rapt attention. Skarda said, “You have to find a man, Henry, and there is no time, no time at all. His name is Michael Hampton, and someone tried to sabotage the secret agenda. It is contained on a tape which this man has. A little tape recording, and somehow he got it. He is running to somewhere and we wish to stop him. And, I might add, so do the Americans, because if the details of the tape are made public, the administration will fall.”

  “It don’t work that way, that’s in England, but never mind. Where is he?”

  “He escaped us in Berlin last night—”

  “Berlin? What’s Berlin got to do with this?”

  “Berlin? We don’t know. We know he has little money and his run is expensive. He has made contact with his friend in Brussels, a woman named Rena Taurus. He seems to know what he will do with the tape, and we suspect he will sell it to someone. Perhaps the press.”

  “You could get someone more familiar with Europe—”

  “But the man who guards Rena Taurus. Is it not fitting?”

  “How?”

  “It is your November man.”

  Silence. The ship groaned against its restraints. Ropes slid up and down against the wharf, and the hull echoed with the slaps of waves against the rusted metal.

  “To kill him?” Henry said.

  “Let us say you could disappear him. Back to the original first part of Plan Skarda. Disappear him to Moscow. It would assure you of your welcome back to the center.”

  Gorki was his code name, always the code name of the current chief of the KGB Committee for External Observation and Resolution. He was small, a Eurasian with wizened features and a broad forehead. His skin was the color of parchment and as dry; his eyes glittered with the intensity of fires lit on the steppes.

  Gorki glared at Skarda, but there was a coolness between them that did not admit to hot emotion.

  “How is Henry McGee?” Gorki said at last.

  “Useful. I am convinced of it.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Skarda said, “About the computer virus that we will use to destroy the records of the CIA.” He smiled.

  Gorki did not return the smile. It was his plan, and he had no doubts that Skarda could technically carry out the computer trickery necessary. But Skarda was not in counterespionage, not trained for it. Gorki felt nervous using the dark, arrogant computer genius in a role not suited to him. Besides, Skarda was a vain man, and the world of spies had no use for vanity or arrogance.

  “Did he believe you?”

  “Of course,” Skarda replied.

  “Henry McGee is not a fool,” Gorki said.

  “It will work as you planned it,” Skarda said. There was an impatient tone in his voice. “The Americans—or your agents—have only to recover the tape, and the secret agenda will be in place.”

  “Do you wonder why it was missing in the first place?” Gorki said. It was the question he had asked himself over and over.

  “An accident by that clumsy janitor—”

  “So it would appear. So we might think. Do you believe in such accidents?”

  “That is a question for you to answer, isn’t it?”

  Gorki permitted himself a small sigh. He glanced at a paper on his desk just to look away. He spoke while he stared at the sheet of paper. “National Security Agency will test your program. They will examine it for viruses that might harm the computer systems of the Central Intelligence Agency. They will run it through many tests to discover the sabotage in the program.”

  Skarda smiled. “And they will not find it.”

  “Because they will look for the wrong thing.”

  “There is no virus in the tape to destroy the record-keeping capacity of CIA. There is only a virus to destroy—”

  “Not destroy. To misdirect the test launching of the sophisticated SDI antimissile missile,” Gorki said. He still did not look at Skarda. “If your program works.”

  “The Americans have committed six billion dollars to the test of this ‘Star Wars’ missile. The missile launch is under control of the National Security Agency. But my program in NSA test computers will make that money worthless because they are connected to CIA.”

  “So,” Gorki said.

  Skarda waxed. He could feel his strength now, in explaining again to one who had heard it before how brilliant he was. “The whole program is a virus designed for one thing. To give the wrong sequence of orders to the NSA computer controlling the test missile. So that when it is fired, the missile will not only fail but will direct a rain of death—”

  “Very dramatic, Skarda.”

  Skarda flushed. After a moment, he said, “In any case, the SDI will be a failure, and the administration will save its face by agreeing to scrap the program in exchange for more refugees from ‘Soviet tyranny.’ ”

  “A good bargain,” Gorki said.

  Skarda said, “Yes. Because we will control the terms of it.”

  12

  BRUSSELS

  Rena awoke suddenly, as though someone had flung the lights on. But there was only darkness. She blinked in the darkness but couldn’t see. What had wakened her so violently? It had been raining all night, and the bedroom window was open a crack. She could smell rain on the wind, and the sill was damp.

  She lay on the flat, soft mattress, her pillows bunched under her head and neck. Her raven hair was splayed out on the pillows, her soft breath was scarcely a sound in the silence. Her fingers touched the rough-edged pages of a paperback novel that lay open, spine up, on the coverlet beside her. The page was opened to a passage describing a ship entering the pestilential harbor in Calcutta.… She had fallen asleep dreaming of a black freighter in the tropical heat, wallowing in deep, malevolent waters to the city of death—

  She was wide awake in the darkness.

  The combined stillnesses of the apartment were so intense that it made a whispering sound in her ears. The rain fell against the window glass. She held her breath and she didn’t know why.

  Then a sound.

  Someone else shared the darkness.

  She reached out her hand to the lamp in panic. She fumbled for the switch on the cord and suddenly pulled the lamp over with a crash.

  She sat upright.

  “Who is it?”

  He moved into the small bedroom. His figure was large and his presence suffocated her. She had to get out of this bed. She decided it was a dream, one of those very realistic dreams that strays back and forth between reality and absurdity. There was no one in the room.

  He sat on the edge of the bed.

  His hand was wet. His coat was damp. She heard him breathe in
the darkness. The breath of the beast.

  He put a finger to his lips.

  She thought of Michael, thought of the danger.

  “You—” she began because it was him again.

  She had to scream. Even in the darkness, in the sleeping district nestled below the Palace of Justice, someone would hear a poor woman screaming in the night and—

  He put his large hand on her mouth.

  She bit him and tasted his blood, but he held his hand as tight as a gag on her mouth. Her scream was strangled. She had heard that sound before, and then she remembered another time, in the darkness, in the countryside, when the bluebird had been pounced upon by the night-roaming cat. The bluebird made a pitiful, sobbing scream—once, twice, a third time—and then, finally, a small peep of death and acceptance. The cat dragged the broken body to the doorstep, where they found it in the morning.

  He still held his hand over her mouth. “Two men in the street below,” Devereaux said. “You’re in danger from them.”

  She was so close to him. The male smell enveloped her. She was afraid and fascinated. She knew she had bit him hard enough to draw blood, but the large, suffocating hand was still against her lips. She would not struggle, not for the moment.

  “KGB, do you understand? We just learned they tapped your telephone in time for your conversation with Michael.”

  She trembled.

  Slowly, he took his hand away. She was sitting upright in bed, her shoulders covered by the shiny white gown. It was the darkness that made their intimacy more terrifying. They did not see each other as much as felt and smelled the presence of the other. Like beasts of the night.

  “How do you know—?”

  “Two hours ago, we caught their transmitter signal. We know what they know.” He paused. She held her breath in the brief silence. “The agents in the street. Someone is bringing a team to back them up. They’re going to follow you in the morning, follow you to Michael.”