Agent Orange

by Langford, Stephen

  They shook hands, and Deschamps leaned in with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. “Your man is back, this time with a most beautiful painting. I let him in, of course, according to your previous wishes. I suggested that open space on the drawing room wall, but…” He gave an exaggerated shrug. “I am just a humble propriétaire, after all.”

  “Rene, that wall is exactly what I was thinking, too,” Keeton said with an affirmative squeeze on the landlord’s shoulder.

  “Monsieur Barney, you are making this apartment into the most elegant of the whole building,” Deschamps said with firm approval.

  “I told you, Rene, this is going to be my French headquarters.”

  “Excellent, sir! Yes, I did notice your, um, commitment,” Deschamps said. In fact he had received a year’s rent in advance just the week before, along with a brief letter describing his tenant’s long-term intention. “Well, you have business upstairs, and I shall be on my way for a bit of déjeuner. Au revoir!”

  The two men waved informally, and Deschamps turned south and began the trek to his favorite lunchtime cafe. Keeton stepped into the tiled vestibule of the apartment building, closed the outer door, and let out a brief sigh. Rene was a nice enough fellow but exhaustingly patronizing. He took out his key, passing through the vestibule’s inner door, and walked up the rounded staircase to the second floor.

  His suite, like all of the others in the building, took up half of the floor. He noted a thin yellow thread barely peeking from beneath his door, so he gave a coded knock. A moment later the door was opened by a man he knew as Romain Roy.

  Roy was dressed in a workman’s blue overalls that bore the name of a fictitious delivery service. His hair and beard had been styled to match the look that was ubiquitous among the French working class, so that switching identities quickly would be easier. He had arrived with the other half of the crew, a man named Philippe Allard, whose cover was that of Theodore Barney’s valet and business manager. Oddly enough, Keeton had adopted the habit, when circumstances allowed him to even speak the real names of his support team, of referring to Roy by his last name and Philippe by his first name. He had no idea why, but the practice had stuck for all of them and for their other Cavalry colleagues. It had been Philippe who had spoken to Deschamps about Barney’s newest material conquest, the antique painting.

  “Welcome home, Monsieur Barney,” Roy said with mock cheerfulness as he closed the door behind them. Like Philippe, Roy was of French descent but had become an American citizen and been recruited into the CIA—not in that order.

  “Afternoon, Roy,” Keeton said as they shook hands. “I assume you’re here to attend to Theodore Barney.”

  “At least we brought you a painting before killing you,” Roy answered. “We got the call from the Fort two hours ago. They said you were having your regular meeting with the Brit and that he would let you know.”

  “He did,” Keeton confirmed. “But we’ll need to plan the accident and everything.”

  “Already arranged,” a voice called from the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. It was Philippe, every bit the formal gentleman’s man in his business suit, with neat, slicked hair and a clean-shaven face. “The boys over there have the spot picked out, the incendiary wired and ready to go, and even a cadaver on ice. The only thing missing is you.”

  “Efficient,” Keeton commented dryly. “If I’m going to be at the Fort in two days…”

  “Your ticket to London,” Philippe said, reaching into his jacket pocket and producing the Air France billet d’avion. “You’re Theodore Barney until we arrive in England. You’ll need to make a show of leaving your flat in the red MGB this evening for a countryside drive.”

  “Rich, obnoxious Yank,” Roy said with an affected British accent.

  “Right,” continued Philippe. “Anyway, tomorrow morning Theodore Barney’s car will be found mangled and smoldering along with the incinerated remains of the owner.”

  “Here, here,” Roy said, walking over to the small but elegant dry bar and pouring each of them two fingers of bourbon. “Rest in peace, Mr. Barney.”

  Keeton set his trilby onto the coat hook on the nearby wall and took the glass from Roy. “Then what?”

  “By the time the authorities are taping off the crash scene, you’ll be checking in at London Airport for the British Airways flight to Washington, under a different name of course.” Philippe handed him the BOAC ticket.

  “Sounds OK, I guess. Any papers here to take care of?”

  “I’ll handle that,” Philippe told him. “Roy will switch to a cabbie cover and pick us up for the airport. We’ll have to wait until Monsieur Deschamps returns from le lunch, so that you can give him the line and say good-bye. I’ll be back in two days to tell him the bad news about Barney.”

  “He’ll be devastated,” Keeton said, sipping the bourbon.

  “I think he’ll get over it when Philippe tells him he gets to keep the payment on the apartment and most of the furnishings,” Roy said with a smile.

  “I suppose so,” Keeton answered. “Listen, I didn’t have any warning about Barney getting taken off the board. It’s pretty drastic, and now I have to be back at the Fort right away, too. What do you fellas hear?”

  Roy and Philippe exchanged quick glances, and then Roy answered. “Nothing official. But two days ago we got a coded instruction to set up a drop point near Brussels for a Russian ECA coming through East Berlin.” All of them knew that by definition this would be one of Agent Red’s missions. “Supposed to come across into WB, then get to the drop point a week later. Then yesterday, the drop was put on hold, sort of urgently.”

  “That happens plenty of times,” Keeton said with a shrug. “What else?”

  “Red’s team has a girl in WB. She called me. Yeah, I know, not protocol, but I think she likes me. Off the record, but still coded, she tells me to be ready to scoot to WB at any moment. But the worst part is, Red’s team on the other side of the curtain is digging deep into a safe house.”

  Keeton looked down into what little remained in his glass as he swirled it. “Red in trouble?”

  Roy shrugged. “That’s as far as we got. We only had thirty seconds on the scrambler. But, yeah, that’s how I figure it.”

  Keeton poured himself another shot and tossed it back. With his cover in such proximity to his Iron Curtain counterpart, Theodore Barney had met Prentis Penfield on several occasions. He had also run two operations with Red using different covers. For clandestine agents they actually knew each other fairly well. If Red had been captured…“Damn,” he said softly. “So that’s why Barney has to go.”

  “Let’s get moving.” Philippe broke in. “We’ll need to be ready for our taxi ride as soon as Deschamps is back.”

  Roy set his glass down and gave them a quasi salute before leaving the apartment to transform into a Parisian cabbie. Philippe locked the door behind Roy.

  “I’ll work ahead a little on your business papers,” Philippe said. “When I get back from London, I want to turn this location around quickly. We’ve got another place picked out here in Paris for a future cover.”

  “Good, we’ll need it,” Keeton answered absently. His thoughts ran back to Agent Red’s status, not because he was worried about his own safety—he had long gotten comfortable with his life of secrets and danger—but because if Red had broken, he would have first endured the harshest interrogation the enemy could offer.

  “Red’s tough. I don’t think he’ll break,” Philippe said. “How about another drink?”

  Keeton filled both their glasses and handed Philippe’s back to him. “To new identities,” he offered.

  Their glasses touched, and Philippe said, “Speaking of which, take a look at your Washington ticket. I think you’ll like it.”

  Agent Orange picked up the BOAC envelope and pulled out the stapled packet. He was booked in for the next afternoon as Passenger 4A, under the name of Andrew Keeton. He smiled. It was, comfortingly, not a cover for once.r />
  ***

  “I can’t send him in without additional intel,” Director Morrison told Bernie Williams quietly.

  “I understand, Don,” Williams answered. “Right now I’m just proposing that we get everything staged for when we’re ready to move.”

  The two men stood together on the overlook platform, which allowed them to view the majority of the Map Room from the south end. The Big Map dominated the area. It was a ten-by-ten-foot table whose surface was a very detailed cartographic drawing of the world. Magnetic markers were affixed at various locations representing the SDD’s assets and their last confirmed whereabouts. Morrison found the five cutout figures that represented his agents, each one the color of his respective code name. Their current cover names were typed on affixed paper labels as well. The missing Agent Red—penfield—was last seen in East Berlin. To the west the orange figure labeled barney had been placed atop Paris, but at that very moment a specialist walked over and slid it up and over to London.

  “Theodore Barney is on his way home to England,” Williams commented. “But he won’t make it out.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” Morrison said ruefully, then smiled at Williams. “Sorry Bernie. I’m just a bit sour, you know.”

  “I completely understand, Director. Well, Andrew Keeton will make it out. The London to Dulles, with a stop in New York. Leaves tomorrow morning our time. Arrives at Dulles at five in the afternoon. He’ll report in first thing Saturday morning.”

  Several other smaller markers showed support staff assigned to the various agents. Three chips were magnetically pinned directly under Red’s figure, indicating that his team was also in East Berlin, in their case holed up in what was hoped to be safe hiding. Both of Orange’s men were still shown in Paris, of course, where according to Romain Roy they were awaiting potential deployment into East Germany. Roy’s girlfriend’s tip had been correct, and Williams mentioned this part of the plan to Morrison.

  “Again, if necessary,” Williams said. “As soon as they settle the Barney matter, they’ll move to WB and wait to hear from Red’s team on the other side of the wall.”

  “So Keeton will get here Saturday morning. Any debrief needed for his current activity?” Morrison asked.

  “No time,” said Williams. “You’ve seen the report he filed last month for the Czech priest. Since then things have fortunately been quiet on his side of the curtain, and we have his weekly reports to pass on to Langley in case they want to follow any leads. No, as soon as he’s back here, we’ll get him working on a new cover.”

  “Keeton’s good,” Morrison reflected. “Hardened, experienced, resilient.”

  “Like his recruiter?” Williams asked.

  “No, I’m just old,” Morrison answered with his wry grin.

  “Excuse me, sirs,” a young, sharply dressed signals specialist said as he approached them. Another crew cut. “A flash just received from East Berlin, coded from the Number Three Safe House. Red’s team.” He handed Williams, his immediate supervisor, a typed sheet.

  Williams looked over the message and nodded to the specialist, who left without any further word. “Looks like they might have a lead.”

  Morrison accepted the page and read the concise report, necessarily coded with generic keywords to enable fast transmission: MOSTLY CLOUDY. CHANCE OF RAIN 80 PERCENT BUT BREAK IN THE CLOUDS IS POSSIBLE. TEMP 75 F. BARO PRESS 892. WINDS ESE 7 MPH. “Let’s have a look down there,” he said. The pair walked down the stairs to the Map Room floor and over to the Big Map. A logistics specialist stepped up.

  “AD.” The specialist greeted Williams, then nodded to Morrison. “Good morning, Director. Need a map?”

  “No, thank you, Banks. I’ll get it,” Williams answered, walking over to a panel of buttons on the right side of the room. He pushed one, and the Big Map, seemingly anchored to the floor, rotated to reveal its opposite side, where a very large film reel that stretched across the table’s surface was illuminated from underneath. The film reel—made up of segments of maps from all over the world—was wound tightly around spindles at either end of the table. Motors moved the giant filmstrip to display different locations. The map showing at the moment was of Vietnam. Williams went up to the table and punched the numbered code for East Berlin into a keypad embedded in the surface. Immediately the spindles began turning, and new maps flashed by, until finally they stopped to display a detailed city map of East Berlin—but one pieced together with aerial photographs rather than diagrams.

  “We’re still changing this one, sir,” Banks mentioned, pointing at a few grease-penciled corrections. “The names and locations are still pretty fluid.”

  “That seems to be everywhere these days,” Morrison said. “Where is Safe House Three?”

  “Right here, sir,” Banks said, using a wooden pointer to indicate one of the hand markings. He knew all of the most active safe houses by memory as part of his job. This one was located on the southern edge of East Berlin.

  “How about that flash?” Williams pointed to the cryptic weather report, which Morrison handed over to Banks.

  Banks took the sheet and ran his finger under the numbers that formed the apparent weather conditions but were in fact coordinates. He leaned over the map and made a fist-size circle on it with a grease pencil, in the heart of the city along the Spree River. Then he walked up alongside Williams. “Factory, sir,” he announced after examining it more closely. “I can find the name if you’d like, and what they presumably do there.”

  “We’ll need that, Banks,” Williams said. “As soon as possible.” Banks nodded and headed off to investigate.

  “The Berlin Wall,” Morrison said softly, reaching down to the map and tracing it with his finger. “Damned Russians. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Did I ever tell you that I enlisted in the army when I was thirty-five?”

  “I didn’t think you were supposed to tell me anything,” Williams answered. “But I figured you got involved back then, like most of us did.”

  Morrison nodded. “Yeah. It was the right thing to do; that’s what we all thought. We were right. Bernie, you’re a bit younger than me, so you probably went in with a rifle and a uniform.”

  “I did,” Williams said. “D-Day, the Bulge, the whole damned mess. Including the camps.”

  “I never had a uniform in the OSS,” Morrison said. “Unless you count the disguises in all those crummy little French and German towns. Most of the time I didn’t have a gun, either. We were fighting the Nazis with information and homemade radios and decoder rings. We were playing catch-up with the Brits, and we had to make a lot of it up as we went along. I learned to speak French after I was stationed in Paris, while the Germans still controlled it. Can you imagine? There were spies back then, to be sure. Soldiers, prostitutes, little old men sweeping the street in front of their stores—you never knew. But it wasn’t so…institutionalized like it is now. I got the word about those camps months before you guys found them—relayed from the Russians coming in from the other side. We worked together to smash the fascists. Then, before we knew it, Hitler was dead and we and the Reds were toasting za vas! to one another.”

  “That was never meant to last,” Williams commented.

  “You can say that again.” Morrison nodded. “My predecessor got the idea for the Cavalry during Operation Vittles in ’49—the so-called Berlin Airlift. Back then he realized how bad things were going to get for the poor souls trapped in the Soviet zone. Knew he couldn’t save them all, but he figured there would be a few sensitive ECAs—before they were called that—who we’d want to help get out to the West.”

  “The Reds wanted communism, and we wanted freedom,” Williams said. “I know it’s not that clean, and I know we have a lot of shit on our own hands. But still, that’s how you get a wall. To keep people in.”

  Morrison slid his finger over to the circle Banks had drawn around the factory. “It’s different when they’re keeping our people in. Bernie, if that lead checks out, if Red has b
een captured and we know he’s in that factory”—he stood up straight and turned to Williams—“we’re going to go get him out.”

  Chapter 3. Mehr Wasser

  It started with the blindfold put across Daniels’s face. Gerolf did the honors at Junger’s behest, paying attention to tighten the knot at the back of the head with a vigorous cinch. Then the lieutenant tipped back the chair and drug it from the interrogation room, down the hallway, and into another cell with a squeaking iron door. The harsh screech of metal scraping concrete indicated a barren location reminiscent of Daniels’s original holding cell. They systematically uncoupled him from the metal chair and carefully repositioned his hands and feet into crude restraints of tied ropes. At least two other men came into the room to help. None of them paid any heed to the condition of his shoulder. By the time they were done, he was strapped to a length of board, inclined so that his feet were angled above his head. The hard knot of the blindfold dug into the back of his skull just at the base of the occipital bone, so that he had to continually strain his neck to relieve the pressure. It was a clever move designed to exhaust him further. Gerolf may have been more than just a blunt instrument after all, Daniels had observed.

  “Mehr Wasser,” Captain Junger’s voiced purred viciously.

  Daniels felt a thick towel being pulled across his face and then presumably tied back under the board so that his head was held firmly down. With some effort, he could breathe through the fabric. His previous suspicions about what they were going to do to him were confirmed, but this knowledge was little solace when he heard the expected telltale sounds: the hissing spigot, water filling a metal bucket, and snippets of German as the Stasi men prepared. With none of the dramatic preliminaries he might have suspected, they began.

  The pouring of water over his face started at the forehead and worked toward his nose and mouth. The moisture quickly soaked through the towel until it was saturated. Tiny rivulets began to form and follow the contours and wrinkles of his face. Despite his intense training back in the United States on what was termed “the water cure,” he could not prevent the effect on his own consciousness. He knew that they were not trying to kill him; nevertheless, the first bit of water to enter his nose began the series of involuntary gag reflexes caused by the overwhelming feeling of being drowned. Hands held his head still. After thirty seconds of his gasping, they ceased pouring the water onto the towel and lifted it away from this mouth so he could breathe freely.