Like other DCIs in the past, Christianson was a political appointee without any previous training or experience in intelligence work. The qualifications that had secured him his job were a hard-edged mind, an inquiring nature, a highly successful career as a manufacturer of electronic software, and an unshakable loyalty to the President and the party he represented. After three years in the job, he was sadly aware of how little these qualifications counted in the day-to-day operations of the Agency, and, equally sadly, he was aware of how much he was forced to depend on the opinions of his senior staff and deputy directors.
Homefire was a case in point. Christianson had more input on the subject than anyone else in Washington. Every intercepted reference to the operation crossed his desk, as did every analysis made by the evaluation teams and every prediction hypothesized as to the nature of the beast. But with all that information available to him, Christianson still had no more idea of what Homefire represented that did the lowliest clerk in Langley.
His deputies seemed equally bewildered, and the suggestions they just had offered had run the gamut of possibilities from the idiotic to the spine-chilling. The DDI, in charge of Operations, had suggested that it was the code name for a projected test of nuclear weapons in outer space. The DD2, in charge of Intelligence, was sure that it signaled a Communist coup d'etat in Egypt. The DD3, in charge of Science and Technology, was equally certain that a Soviet invasion of Yugoslavia was imminent; while the DD4, in charge of Support, had opted for a secret rapprochement between Moscow and Peking. Only Edwin Swan, the DD5, had not yet offered an opinion.
Christianson looked down the table at the impeccably dressed gentleman whose face was lined with age and whose patrician bearing and calculated disdain had been known to shrivel the ego of the most hardened bureaucrats. Edwin Swan held the position of DD5, or Deputy in charge of the Fifth Directorate; but his title was, in itself, misleading, for the organizational table of the Agency provided for only the four directorates represented by the other men at the meeting. The Fifth Directorate did not appear on the table, and, administratively, it could be said not to exist at all, since its funds were drawn from an unaccounted General Reserve. The Fifth Directorate was Edwin Swan's personal domain. Concerning itself with the entire spectrum of activities within the CIA as well as all other intelligence organizations, the Fifth was, in effect, an Agency within and without the Agency and, as such, had been a source of concern to every DCI under whom Swan had served. Some of these Directors had accepted the situation with resignation; others had fought to have the Fifth abolished, but of these latter not one had ever come close to succeeding. In Washington shorthand, Edwin Swan knew where the bodies were buried, and he could not be touched. There was simply too much political power and explosive information concentrated in the Fifth, and for years all of it had been under the control of Edwin Swan and his three associates in the directorate, who were known collectively as the Gang of Four.
Edwin Swan, Gerard Krause, Peter Andriakis, and Joseph Wolfe . . . labeling these men after the Chinese Gang of Four had been the kind of joke that bureaucrats thrive on, but no one within the Agency truly thought that there was anything humorous about them. Like their Chinese namesakes, the members of the American Gang of Four were looked upon with fear and respect, but with no affection at all. The four men were extraordinarily close. They shared the same political ideology, the same quasi- religious zeal of the convinced anti-Communist, and the same contempt for the post-Watergate restrictions that the Congress and the nation had placed upon the Agency. All of them were products of those freewheeling days when the Agency had been a power and a law unto itself, and all of them lived for the day when that power would be returned to them.
At least I was able to break up that clique, thought Christianson, his eyes still on Swan.
One of his first moves after taking office had been to dismantle the Gang of Four. Peter Andriakis had been transferred out of the Fifth Directorate to an obscure station in Corfu, where he was now involved in the relatively unimportant work of running agents in Albania. Joseph Wolfe had been pried loose from his Langley desk and returned to his previous station in Barcelona, a distinct demotion. Gerard Krause virtually had been put on the shelf with a transfer to Brissago on the Swiss-Italian border, where he occupied himself with vetting police reports on Milan's Red Brigade terrorists.
Only Swan had proved to be untouchable, retaining control of his Fifth Directorate and all the powers that went with it. He was the one man in Washington whom Christianson both feared and despised, and without realizing it he frowned as he saw that Swan was finally about to speak.
"I am an intuitive person," said Swan. His voice was mild, but it commanded immediate attention. The others at the table stopped their murmurings, and coffee cups clinked into saucers. "I admit it openly, I rely on my intuition. Some of you may see that as a sign of weakness, but I don't. In this world that we live in we operate so often in gray areas, without guidelines, that we are forced to depend on such things. In twenty years my intuition has rarely failed me."
Christianson nodded understandingly. "We all get those gut feelings sometimes."
Swan wrinkled his nose in distaste. It was not a phrase he would have chosen. He had little liking or respect for the Director, but there were conventions to be followed, and so he only murmured, "Yes, no doubt we do."
"And what does your intuition tell you?"
Swan stirred himself and said, "Homefire is like the three blind men with the elephant. The first one grasps the elephant's tail and thinks that he's caught a reptile. The second one bumps against a leg and deduces that he's walked into a tree. The third one feels the trunk and concludes that he's holding an accordion. The three men put their heads together and decide, on the basis of the evidence, that they've stumbled into an Italian wedding being held in a forest full of snakes. That's the way we are with our current enigma, gentlemen. Blind men playing with an elephant."
The DDI sipped his coffee and asked archly, "And which part of the elephant have you gotten hold of?"
"No part at all. I'm trying to avoid the analogy, not conform to it. I've given our elephant a great deal of thought." Swan's tone of voice indicated that he engaged in thought the way other men engaged in prayer. "And I'm afraid that I can't agree with any of you. I don't see a breakthrough in weaponry, I don't see a deal with the Chinese, and I certainly can't give any weight to the Egyptian or the Yugoslav theory. Because, gentlemen, all of those possibilities have a purpose in and of themselves. Think a moment. Our intercepts have told us that whatever the nature of Homefire as an operation, its principal effect - the one that the boys in the Kremlin are most interested in - will be in the field of pure propaganda. Isn't that so?"
The others nodded.
"Then," said Swan, "isn't it possible that propaganda may be Homefire's actual purpose . . . and not merely a significant result? Its purpose - “he hesitated - "and, indeed, its nature."
Swan sat back in his seat as the other four deputies looked at each other doubtfully. Christianson tapped the table lightly with a pencil. "Propaganda," he said. "Not military, not technical, not political. You're excluding those options?"
"I am."
The DD2 asked, "And you base this on your intuition?"
"My intuition, my experience, and one other factor. We live in a world of information where the battle is for the minds of men. Not for their weapons or their wealth, but for their minds and their loyalties. The one sure thing that we know about Homefire is that it is an operation on a grand scale, and in today's world the grand coup is the propaganda triumph, something that will sway the minds of millions of men."
"And what form do you see this coup taking?" asked the DD4.
Swan shrugged and made it an elegant gesture. "I have no idea. Some massive form of disinformation, I suspect, some great lie magnified even more greatly through the lenses of the communications media." He leaned forward in his seat and spat out the next words. "Something th
at will make us look like a pack of fools, no doubt, while we sit here dithering about coups in Cairo and similar nonsense."
Voices rose in protest, particularly that of the DD2 who had been the author of the Egyptian option, and Christianson tapped his pencil again. "Edwin, those are strong words when all you have is an intuition. But if you do feel that way about it, perhaps you wouldn't mind running up a position paper for us. Just the essentials of your theory and a suggested course of action."
"A position paper." Swan's voice was cold. "That's just what we need, one more position paper on Operation Homefire."
"You prefer not to?"
"Oh no, I'll do it, all right. I've had a great deal of experience in preparing position papers for the occupant of this office, whoever he is at the time."
"Thank you, Edwin." The Director once again buried a sigh, this time of relief. He looked at the clock on the wall. "I think we can pass on to the Brazilian question now."
Forty-five minutes later Swan entered his own office, also on the coveted seventh floor, and ordered his principal aide to set up a telephone conference call on the pry-proof network with his three colleagues in the so-called Gang of Four, a phrase he loathed. Once Andriakis was on the phone in Corfu, Wolfe in Barcelona, and Krause in Brissago, Swan filled them in on the essentials of the meeting he had just left. This was something he did regularly. The Gang of Four might be disbanded for the moment; but Swan made sure that his three associates, rusticating as they were in the boondocks, were kept current with Agency affairs. When he was finished, he, asked them for their thoughts on Homefire.
Andriakis answered first. "You're probably right," he said, "you usually are. But don't count on any bright ideas from me. The trouble is, I'm too far away from the sources of information. I know that you try to keep us up to date, but it's not the same as being back at Langley. Sorry, Edwin, but I'm turning into a Greek yokel."
"Gerard?"
"I'm in the same position as Peter, not enough input. All I do here is sit on my duff and rubber-stamp reports."
"No ideas?"
"None."
"Joseph?"
Known as the Chessmaster, Joseph Wolfe had the most incisive mind of the four, but he, too, refused to offer an opinion. "The propaganda theory makes sense, but as to what form it will take ..." The others could almost hear his shrug over the telephone. "I'm accustomed to solving problems laid out on a board. I can't play a game where I don't know the value of the pieces."
There was silence on the line as Swan mentally damned Harvey Christianson for having condemned three of the finest minds in the Agency to virtual exile. At that moment he hated with equal passion Christianson for his mindless vendetta against the Fifth and all the reformers, liberals, and bleeding hearts in Congress who had cut off the Agency's legs at the knees.
Controlling his fury, he said, "I understand, Joseph. I know it can't be easy for you, being stuck where you are. One of these days you three will be back here with me at Langley, I promise you that."
Krause broke in. "Does that mean that you're working on something? Something to do with Homefire?"
"It's possible. Solving that little puzzle might give me just the kind of leverage I need to make some changes around here. But it's too early to say. I'll be in touch with you all soon."
With the conference call completed, Swan cleared his desk and descended to the parking lot where his car was waiting. His driver asked, "Back to the Coolidge?"
"No, the Fun House first," said Swan, for this was his day to visit with Vasily Borgneff. The meeting was routine, a monthly visit that Swan had been making ever since the Russian had recovered from his wound and had been moved from the hospital in Bethesda to the safety of the Fun House. There he had been kept in storage, seven months now, while Swan debated what to do with him. The decision was not an easy one to make. Borgneff was a man whom all the world thought dead, including the Agency outside of the Fifth Directorate, including his own KGB bosses, and including Eddie Mancuso, the man who thought he had killed him.
We should have let him die, thought Swan. The dead are never a problem, but what do you do with the resurrected?
As his driver worked his way out of the downtown Washington traffic and onto Interstate 95, Swan opened the case on the seat beside him and took out the Borgneff file. He went through the pages carefully, at times making notes in the margins with a neat, almost fussy hand.
SUBJECT: Vasilv Borgneff
REFERENCE: U17924
POB: USSR
AGE: 47
CLASIFICATION: Equivalent of US category ARM-1
BACKGROUND SUMMARY: Borgneff was, for over twenty years, a contract employee of the Fourth Division of the Second Directorate of the KGB involved in the creation, invention, refinement, and manufacture of Unusual Killing Devices . . . UKDs. [Truly murderous stuff, Swan noted.] During this period of time he was considered to be one of the leading experts in the field, second only in reputation to the American Eddie Mancuso. [My opinion: just as good.] In fact, the careers of Borgneff and Mancuso followed parallel tracks that converged when both men decided to seek early retirement from their respective agencies, a request certain to be denied because of the highly sensitive nature of their work. They thereupon joined forces in a brilliantly planned operation designed to eliminate their immediate superiors, an action which, because of the cell-like structure of their organizations [since abandoned, at least by us], would have effectively freed them from both service and retribution.
OPERATIONAL SUMMARY: That these plans succeeded as well as they did is a tribute to the genius and determination of both Borgneff and Mancuso. The operation, in fact, would have been totally effective had there not been a falling out between the two men [over that bitch. Chalice Parker!] that eventually came to violence and resulted in Borgneff s being blinded in one eye and left for dead in a field near Williamsburg, Virginia [and with the Parker woman dead on the sands at Virginia Beach],
It was at this point that Mancuso disappeared from sight, and since then all attempts to locate him have been unsuccessful. He is now under open warrant.
Borgneff then passed into Agency hands and. after three months of recovery and rehabilitation, has since been held in preventive detention pending disposition of his case. Repeated requests for information about Borgneff have been received through unofficial channels from the Second Directorate of the KGB. These requests have been ignored. [They'd just love to get their hands on him. They'd have his guts for garters.]
ACTION STATUS: On permanent hold pending decision by the Deputy Director, Five.
Swan closed the folder as his car swung up the exit ramp of the Interstate just below Woodbridge and crossed above the highway to follow the garishly painted red, white, and blue signs that advertised and pointed the way to the All-American Amusement Park, a recreational area that covered over one hundred acres of Virginia countryside. As the car pulled into the parking lot, he was pleased to note that even at this early hour the tourists were out in droves. All-American Amusements was one of the more profitable enterprises of the Fifth Directorate, and although its primary purpose was concealed, the fact that the cover operation made money as well was always a source of contentment to him.
Getting out of the car, he ignored the signs that invited the visitor to sample the wonders of the Jungle Safari, the Authentic Frontier Stampede and Rodeo, the Parachute Tower and the South Seas Aquarium, and made directly for the Fun House, a large and rambling structure with a fagade of a decaying Scottish castle. He followed a group of tourists in, paying his way, and steadied himself to negotiate the Rolling Barrel entrance. Once through it, he bypassed the ride through the Tunnel of Love and strode confidently down the Ghostly Corridor impervious to the recorded moans, the rattling of chains, and the slamming of doors. He brushed by disembodied heads and hands that popped out at him and entered the Mirror Maze, composed of hundreds of sections of warped and twisted glass. Counting his steps and staring at the floor so as not to be c
onfused by the reflected images, he made a sharp right turn through an apparently solid wall and then another turn that took him out of the traffic flow entirely. The last turn brought him face to face with a large, uniformed guard.
"Morning, Mr. Swan," said the guard, touching the peak of his cap with a forefinger and standing aside to let him pass.
"Good morning, Stein," said Swan, brushing by. A left turn brought him out of the maze and into the storage room of the Wax Museum, filled with statuary groupings that depicted some of the more celebrated slayings in the annals of history and crime. Lizzie Borden was there with her ax, Jack the Ripper in the act of disemboweling a London prostitute, the two little Princes about to be smothered in the Tower of London, and John Dillinger cut down by the FBI tommyguns while the Lady in Red looked on, horrified ... all of it set in glistening wax. At the end of the room two more guards, un-uniformed this time, passed him through a steel door that opened into a long, dank hallway. At the end of the hallway was still another door, this one with a speaker set beside it. Swan stood in front of the door without moving.
A voice from the speaker said, "Statement, please."
"This is the Deputy Director Five," said Swan, and repeated the phrase. He said it slowly and clearly so that the computerized impression-reader on the other side of the door would have no difficulty in identifying his voice pattern. After a moment the door slid open.
He stepped into a small anteroom where two portal guards greeted him. On the far side of the room was an antiquated freight elevator. On one side of the elevator was the door to a stairway. On the other side was the mouth of a curved aluminum chute, a relic of earlier days in the Fun House. In other earlier days, when he was younger, Swan had occasionally delighted in using the chute to slide to the floor below, just as the younger men on the staff did now. But nowadays he used the elevator, and moments later he was thirty feet below ground level under the Fun House in the depths of a bastion that served a multitude of functions for the Fifth Directorate.
The Sleeping Spy Page 6
