The Once and Future Spy

by Robert Littell

  Fargo shrugged. “I’ve been in the Oval Office half a dozen times but I’ve always been riding on the Attorney General’s coattails. He brings me along to answer questions. It’s the kind of situation where I don’t speak unless I’m spoken to.”

  Snow’s face screwed up in disappointment. “I was hoping you were senior enough to get in to see the President if you wanted to.”

  “Look, I’m not sure where this conversation is going, but if it would help move things along, I am senior enough to see the Attorney General any time I need to. And the Attorney General has unlimited access to the Oval Office.”

  Snow brought a cuticle up to her teeth and began gnawing on it. Fargo asked, “What’s this about, Snow?” And he added very gently, “Jeb trusted me. You can too.”

  Snow seemed to gather herself, like a runner before the start of a race. “Okay,” she blurted out. “Let’s see what happens.” And in long run-on sentences that broke off only when she came up for air, she proceeded to tell him about the atrocity an agent named Wanamaker was going to commit; how someone she knew had stumbled across details of the operation, which was code-named Stufftingle, while running a top secret Agency eavesdropping program; how he had attempted to head off the atrocity by threatening to leak evidence indicating the CIA was responsible if Wanamaker went through with it; how the Agency had attempted, on three occasions, to eliminate him; how she was desperately afraid they would succeed the next time they tried.

  “How are you using the word eliminate?” Fargo asked.

  Snow said, “Eliminate as in murder.” And she described the three attempts on Sibley’s life.

  “Your friend told you about the fire breather cornering him in the parking lot? About the air being pumped out of the library?”

  Snow nodded miserably.

  “He told you about the wrecking ball?”

  Snow caught the note of doubt in Fargo’s voice. Looking squarely into his eyes, she said with quiet intensity, “He didn’t have to tell me. I was there. It was my head the building came down on.”

  Fargo’s attitude changed instantly. “You were there with him? You saw it?”

  Snow said, “Maybe now you’ll believe me.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “I wanted to but my friend said it was out of the question. He said they would check his story with Washington. He said the Agency would claim he was crazy and come and get him.”

  “Tell me again about this atrocity he says the Agency is planning to commit. What proof does he have?”

  “He’s hidden some computer printouts of conversations in which the atrocity is discussed.”

  “Why doesn’t he take his printouts to the newspapers? Splash it across the front pages? The Agency couldn’t very well eliminate him once he exposed the plot.”

  “You don’t understand,” insisted Snow. She felt she was reaching the limits of her patience, of her strength. She decided she would make one last effort to convince him. “My friend is a patriot. He wants to head off the atrocity without dragging the Central Intelligence Agency through the mud, and the United States along with it.”

  “Who else besides you and your friend know about this?”

  “As far as I know, no one.”

  The waitress turned up carrying a tray filled with food. She set the shrimp curry down in front of Fargo and the number seventeen in front of Snow. “Enjoy,” she said.

  Snow and Fargo didn’t bother exchanging plates; neither felt like eating now. Fargo pursed his lips, considering the problem for a long while, finally asked, “Is your friend aware you phoned me?”

  Snow closed her eyes for a moment. “When I suggested trying to go over the head of the Agency he got annoyed. He thinks …”

  “What does he think?” Fargo encouraged her.

  “He thinks the President may have authorized the whole thing.” She leaned forward. “Will you help us, Michael?”

  Fargo nodded. “I’ll nose around the shop and see what I can come up with. How do I get in touch with you?”

  Snow sat back. “I’ll get in touch with you,” she said quickly. She watched him carefully to see how he would take this.

  Fargo just smiled faintly. “Do you think your friend would agree to meet me?”

  “Depending on what you come up with, I could try and convince him.”

  Fargo watched Snow raise a cuticle to her teeth. She badly needed reassuring, he saw. He reached for her hand. “You can count on me,” he told her.

  “That’s what I seem to be doing,” she noted uncertainly.

  18

  The Attorney General heard Fargo out without interrupting him. “You did the right thing to come to me,” he announced in the famous raspy voice that came across during television interviews as honest combativeness. “I take it your lady friend didn’t tell you the name of the man in question.”

  Fargo shook his head. “That’s understandable. She’s frightened.”

  The Attorney General removed a tiny hearing aid from his ear and massaged the area that had been irritated by the device, then replaced it. “What did you say?” he asked.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Fargo said.

  “Oh, I thought you said something. About your lady friend: She has good reason to be frightened, but from what you’ve told me I don’t think she understands where the real danger lies. Her friend’s name is Silas Sibley. I have a file as thick as your fist on him. Until he failed to show up for work about ten days ago he was a member of a Central Intelligence Agency Techint team collecting serial numbers of Russian tanks in East Europe, Syria, Egypt, even the ones captured over the years by the Israelis. The object of the study was to come up with a definitive estimate of Soviet tank production capacity. This Sibley fellow was supposed to be an ace with computers. He matched the serial numbers against other information, ran the whole thing through his computer and circulated a minority report claiming that the Soviets had doctored their serial numbers to throw just such a study off track. Sibley made a case that their actual tank production was considerably less than we thought.” The Attorney General produced a gold and silver cigarette lighter, angled the flame into the bowl of his pipe and sucked it into life. “Since our antitank production line is geared to their tank production, his report stirred up quite a storm. His conclusions were double-checked by an interagency group of specialists. They decided that it was Sibley, not the Russians, who had doctored the numbers.”

  The Attorney General puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, exhaled. A haze of vile-smelling smoke obscured his head. “The specialists raised the possibility that Sibley was working for the Russians. His access to documents was restricted while our people looked into this. Sibley panicked. He fired off bitter letters complaining he was being hounded for not telling the military establishment what it wanted to hear. He flatly refused to take a lie detector test on the grounds that it was notoriously inaccurate. We did manage to slip a psychiatrist onto the committee that heard him out. The result,” the Attorney General said, “was a psychiatric profile that indicated the man was stark raving mad.” The Attorney General lifted the phone and said very quietly, “Bring me the psychiatrist’s report on that Sibley fellow, will you?” He regarded Fargo through a haze of tobacco smoke. “I don’t pretend to understand all the technical jargon,” he said, “but you can get the general drift reading it yourself. Functional paranoia, delusions of persecution, delusions of grandeur, all jumbled up with a healthy death wish symbolized by an obsession with Nathan Hale. Sibley had been going around telling people he was a direct descendant of Hale’s. He said he was reconstructing the Hale story from references buried in letters and diaries, but in fact he seems to have made the whole thing up. He was inventing everything. The Hale story, plots within the government. Everywhere he turned he saw enemies. People trying to kill him. That sort of thing.”

  A male secretary holding a sheet of paper came across the carpeted office. The Attorney General nodded toward Fargo. The sec
retary handed him the report and left. “Sibley,” the Attorney General went on, “has a particular grudge against a college roommate who wound up, like him, working for the Central Intelligence Agency. Sibley apparently thinks this roommate was responsible for the death of a girlfriend at college. I forget the roommate’s name.”

  Fargo, scanning the report, said, “Wanamaker.”

  “That sounds right. Wanamaker.”

  Fargo looked up from the report. “Have you ever heard of an operation code-named ‘Stufftingle’?”

  The Attorney General nodded slowly. “ ‘Stufftingle’ is the name of Wanamaker’s shoestring operation. He analyzes Soviet telephone directories to try and figure out the pecking order in the various Soviet ministries.”

  “My lady friend,” Fargo said, “says that her friend claimed that the word Stufftingle came from a joke circulated at the Los Alamos atomic project during World War Two.”

  The Attorney General shrugged. “You know as well as I do how these code names are chosen. They’re picked from lists compiled by computer, which joins together random syllables to form unintelligible words. I suppose it’s always possible that a given two- or three-syllable word has some historical significance, but if this is the case with Stufftingle it is pure coincidence.” The Attorney General pointed at the psychiatrist’s report with his pipe. “Read the next to last paragraph.”

  Fargo’s eyes went back to the report. “It is imperative,” the psychiatrist had written, “that Sibley undergo extended psychiatric treatment by highly skilled professionals. Until then it must be remembered, in dealing with him, that it is vitally important to never challenge his delusions. When he is pinned down the delusions seem to multiply; he invents new stories to justify the old ones he told. If he is backed into a corner there is a strong possibility he could become violent.”

  The Attorney General said, “If he had turned up for work on schedule the psychiatrist’s suggestion would have been acted on. Sibley would have been packed off to some quiet private hospital the Agency keeps for these purposes, and treated.”

  Fargo laid the report on the desk. “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said. “My lady friend was with him during the third attempt on his life.”

  The Attorney General sucked on his pipe without answering, and Fargo wondered if he had turned down his hearing aid. He had seen him tune out of conversations before. Raising his voice, Fargo said, “My lady friend was with him during the third attempt on his life. She witnessed it.”

  “I heard you the first time,” the Attorney General snapped. “I was thinking. Assuming your lady friend got the story straight, we only have Sibley’s word for the first two attempts on his life-and you have to admit they seem like scenes out of a James Bond movie. As for the third attempt, as I understand it, your lady friend went to an abandoned building earmarked for destruction to photograph squatters. Sibley accompanied her. It was lunch hour. They parked their car in the street so as not to frighten off the squatters and went inside. They climbed the steps to the top floor. Still no squatters. Suddenly two wrecking balls began demolishing the building.” The Attorney General sucked on his pipe and exhaled again. “The demolition people came back from their lunch break, assumed the building was deserted and started working. Like most paranoiacs, Sibley fitted a piece of reality neatly into his delusions. He told your lady friend they were trying to kill him. She believed it.”

  “So did I,” Fargo admitted.

  “If you want to help your friend you’d better make sure Sibley gets professional assistance, and quickly. Remember what the psychiatrist said about the possibility of him becoming violent. Let’s hope your lady friend doesn’t back him into a corner.”

  “Let’s hope,” Fargo agreed worriedly.

  “Do you think you could talk her into setting up a meeting between you and Sibley?”

  “I can try,” Fargo said.

  “Be careful not to let on you have doubts about him,” the Attorney General warned.

  “I’ll say I checked his story and want to help.”

  “You need to meet him face to face.”

  “To work out a way to stop the atrocity. To punish those responsible.”

  “That’s the ticket,” the Attorney General said.

  19

  The Weeder took the news badly. The color drained from his face. His eyes narrowed. A lid twitched. He peered distractedly at the street between two slats of the Venetian blind.

  “I swear to you,” Snow said from across the room, “I didn’t tell him where you were.”

  “He could have followed you.”

  “I saw him hail a cab. I saw him leave. I lost myself in a crowd at Copley Square. I changed buses twice.”

  “He could have traced the call when you phoned him back.”

  “I dialed from a downtown booth.”

  The Weeder watched an automobile cruise slowly past Esther’s house. When it disappeared from view he turned to stare at Snow. “I don’t understand how you could do something that dumb,” he said impatiently. His eyes darted around the room, settled on a pewter candlestick with a cream-colored candle in it. He went over and hefted it, absently measuring its weight. “I know those people in Washington-they’re all alike. What else did you tell him?”

  Snow looked at the candlestick, then at the Weeder. “That’s all. I give you my word.”

  “You didn’t tell him about my pretending to be a Soviet spy?”

  “I didn’t say a word about that part.”

  “You said I was trying to prevent an atrocity. That’s all?”

  “I told him about the attempts to kill you.”

  ‘Three attempts. Did you tell him there were three attempts?”

  Snow nodded. “I described the first two-the man with the tattoos who tried to incinerate you, the business in the library when they pumped out all the air.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  Snow smiled nervously. “Silas, you’re frightening me,” she whispered.

  “I have to know if he believed you,” the Weeder insisted. “Everything … everything … depends on it.”

  “I don’t think he really believed me until I told him about the third time they tried to kill you-until I told him I was there and witnessed the whole thing.”

  Some of the tension seemed to seep from the Weeder’s face muscles. To Snow it looked like a tide receding. A thin attempt at a sheepish grin spread across his lips. “Tell me again what he said this morning,” he ordered.

  “I told you twice already.”

  “Tell me a third time.”

  “He said he had nosed around. Those were his exact words. He said he was convinced you had stumbled onto something important. He said that you and he had to put your heads together.”

  “I could go downtown and call him,” the Weeder remarked.

  “He won’t talk to you over the phone. He thinks it’s too dangerous. He says he absolutely has to meet with you.” Snow reached out to rest her fingers on the Weeder’s knuckles. “I know Michael Fargo, Silas. I’d trust him with my life.”

  “You’re trusting him with my life,” the Weeder pointed out.

  Snow said very quietly, very convincingly, “If it comes down to it, I’d trust him with your life too.”

  “That’s easy for you to say-”

  Snow retorted angrily, “It’s not easy for me to say at all. This is the first time since Jeb’s-” She took a breath, started over again. “You mean a great deal to me.”

  The Weeder asked reluctantly, “Where does he want to meet me?”

  “In a fish restaurant near the wharfs. Tomorrow. At noon.”

  “Do you have to confirm it?”

  “He said not to call him back-the less we used the phone, the better, he said. He’ll be there. He’s counting on me to talk you into coming.”

  “I don’t know,” muttered the Weeder.

  The room was growing dark. He walked over to the blind and parted the slats with a finger and looked ou
t again. The street was deserted. The yellowish lights the city had recently installed made everything in sight look unreal, invented. He noticed a sliver of a moon hanging over the roof of the house across from them. That, at least, looked genuine enough. “There was a sliver of a moon the night my man Nate made his way across Long Island to Flatbush and Molly,” he remembered.

  Snow sensed he was slipping into a role, into an incarnation, but she refused to follow him; refused to recite lines someone else had spoken; refused to live a life that had already been lived.

  The Weeder set the candlestick down on a floorboard. He found a match and, cupping a palm around the flame, lit the wick. Instantly, shadows danced across the wall. His eyes brightened and he looked around as if he had suddenly been transported to a magic lantern theater. “I love shadows,” he whispered. He stared at the candle, spellbound by the thinness, the blueness, the stillness of the flame leaping from it.

  Snow limped over to him and drew him to his feet and put her arms around his neck. She shivered, got control of herself, kissed him on the lips. And smiling a smile that held back a torrent of tears, she started to undo the tiny buttons down the front of her shirt.

  20

  “What are you doing?” she asked as the Weeder started to walk through the shopping mall, diagonally across from the fish restaurant, for the fifth time.

  “I’m practicing something I’m not very good at,” the Weeder said. He made no effort to suppress his bitterness. “Where I used to work, it was called tradecraft.” He plunged his gloveless hands deeper into his overcoat pockets and studied the window of a record store, using it as if it were a mirror, looking in it for remarkable things-lean young men wearing belted raincoats and lightly tinted aviator sunglasses, window-shopping for things they were unlikely to buy. “The last time I tried this particular trick of the trade I wound up being cornered in a parking lot by a wino breathing fire.” On the spur of the moment he pulled Snow into a store that sold clothing and made her try on a pleated skirt while he surveyed the passing crowds through the window. Snow played the game. “How do you like me in lilac?” she asked, pirouetting to make the skirt flare around her feet.