Another regular came in. He was a cabdriver who usually got a cup of coffee before beginning his day, and sat alone at the end of the counter. He opened his paper to the sports page, looking around the cafe as he usually did. He could see the napkin on the saucer. He wasn't quite as good as Butch. Setting the paper in his lap, he reached under the counter and retrieved the message, tucking it in the Style section.
After that, it was pretty easy. Loomis paid her bill and left, hopping into her Ford Escort and driving to the Watergate apartments. She had a key to Henderson's apartment.
"You're getting a message today from Butch," she told Agent Cassius.
"Okay." Henderson looked up from his breakfast. He didn't at all enjoy having this girl "running" him as a double agent. He especially didn't like the fact that she was on the case because of her looks, that the "cover" for their association was a supposed affair which, of course, was pure fiction. For all her sweetness, her syrupy Southern accent--and her stunning good looks! he grumped--Henderson knew all too well that Loomis viewed him as half a step above a microbe. "Just remember," she'd told him once, "there's a room waiting for you." She was referring to the United States Penitentiary--not "correctional facility"--at Marion, Illinois, the one that had replaced Alcatraz as the home of the worst offenders. No place for a Harvard man. But she'd only done that once, and otherwise treated him politely, even occasionally grabbing his arm in public. That only made it worse.
"You want some good news?" Loomis asked.
"Sure."
"If this one goes through the way we hope, you might be clear. All the way out." She'd never said that before.
"What gives?" Agent Cassius asked with interest.
"There's a CIA officer named Ryan--"
"Yeah, I heard the SEC's checking him out--well, they did, a few months back. You let me tell the Russians about that ..."
"He's dirty. Broke the rules, made half a million dollars on insider information, and there's a grand jury meeting in two weeks that's going to burn his ass, big-time." Her profanity was all the more vivid from the sweet, Southern-Belle smile. "The Agency's going to hang him out to dry. No help from anybody. Ritter hates his guts. You don't know why, but you heard it from Senator Fredenburg's aide. You get the impression that's he's a sacrificial goat for something that went wrong, but you don't know what. Something a few months back in Central Europe, maybe, but that's all you heard. Some of it you tell right off. Some you make them wait till this afternoon. One more thing--you've heard a rumor that SDI may actually be on the table. You think it's bad information, but you heard a senator say something about it. Got it?"
"Yeah." Henderson nodded.
"Okay." Loomis walked off to the bathroom. Butch's favorite coffee shop was too greasy for her system.
Henderson went to his bedroom and selected a tie. Out? he wondered as he knotted it partway, then changed his mind. If that were true--he had to admit that she'd never lied to him. Treated me like scum, but never lied to me, he thought. Then I can get out ... ? Then what? he asked himself. Does it matter?
It mattered, but it mattered more that he'd get out.
"I like the red one better," Loomis observed from the door. She smiled sweetly. "A 'power' tie for today, I think."
Henderson dutifully reached for the red one. It never occurred to him to object. "Can you tell me ... ?"
"I don't know--and you know better. But they wouldn't let me say this unless everybody figured that you paid some back, Mr. Henderson."
"Can't you call me Peter, just once?" he asked.
"My father was the twenty-ninth pilot shot down over North Vietnam. They got him alive--there were pictures of him, alive--but he never came out."
"I didn't know."
She spoke as evenly as though discussing the weather. "You didn't know a lot of things, Mr. Henderson. They won't let me fly airplanes like Daddy did, but in the Bureau I make life as hard on the bastards as I can. They let me do that. I just hope that it hurts 'em like they've hurt me." She smiled again. "That's not very professional, is it?"
"I'm sorry. I'm afraid I don't know what else to say."
"Sure you do. You'll tell your contact what I told you to say." She tossed him a miniature tape recorder. It had a special computerized timer and an antitamper device. While in the taxicab, he'd be under intermittent surveillance. If he tried to warn his contact in any way, there was a chance--how great or small he did not know--that he'd be detected. They didn't like him and they didn't trust him. He knew that he'd never earn affection or trust, but Henderson would settle for getting out.
He left his apartment a few minutes later and walked downstairs. There was the usual number of cabs circulating about. He didn't gesture, but waited for one to come to him. They didn't start talking until it pulled into the traffic on Virginia Avenue.
The cab took him to the General Accounting Office headquarters on G Street, Northwest. Inside the building, he handed the tape recorder over to another FBI agent. Henderson suspected that it was a radio as well, though actually it was not. The recorder went to the Hoover Building. Loomis was waiting when it got there. The tape was rewound and played.
"CIA got it right for once," she observed to her supervisor. Someone even more senior was here. This was more important than she'd thought, Loomis knew at once.
"It figures. A source like Ryan doesn't come along real often. Henderson got his lines down pretty good."
"I told him that this may be his ticket out." Her voice said more than that.
"You don't approve?" the Assistant Director asked. He ran all of the FBI's counterintel operations.
"He hasn't paid enough, not for what he did."
"Miss Loomis, after this is all over, I'll explain to you why you're wrong. Put that aside, okay? You've done a beautiful job handling this case. Don't blow it now."
"What'll happen to him?" she asked.
"The usual, into the witness-protection program. He may end up running the Wendy's in Billings, Montana, for all I know." The AD shrugged. "You're getting promoted and sent to the New York Field Office. We have another one we think you're ready for. There's a diplomat attached to the UN who needs a good handler."
"Okay." The smile this time was not forced.
"They bit. They bit hard," Ritter told Ryan. "I just hope you're up to it, sonny boy."
"No danger involved." Jack spread his hands. "This ought to be real civilized."
Only the parts you know about. "Ryan, you are still an amateur so far as field ops are concerned. Remember that."
"I have to be for this to work," Jack pointed out.
"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud," the DDO said.
"That's not the way Sophocles said it." Jack grinned.
"My way's better. I even had a sign put up at the Farm that quotes me."
Ryan's idea for the mission had been a simple one--too simple, and Ritter's people had refined it over a period of ten hours into a real operation. Simple in concept, it would have its complications. They all did, but Ritter didn't like that fact.
Bart Mancuso had long since gotten used to the idea that sleeping wasn't included in the list of things that submarine skippers were expected to do, but what he especially hated was a knock on the door fifteen minutes after he was able to lie down.
"Come!" And die! he didn't say.
"FLASH traffic, eyes-only-captain," the Lieutenant said apologetically.
"It better be good!" Mancuso snarled, snapping the covers off the bunk. He walked aft in his skivvies to the communications room, to port and just aft of the attack center. Ten minutes later he emerged and handed a slip of paper to the navigator.
"I want to be there in ten hours."
"No sweat, Cap'n."
"The next person who bothers me, it better be a grave national emergency!" He walked forward, barefoot on the tile deck.
"Message delivered," Henderson told Loomis over dinner.
"Anything else?" Candlelight and all, she
thought.
"Just wanted to confirm. They didn't want new info, just to back up what they already had from some different sources. At least, that's the way I read it. I have another delivery for them."
"Which one's that?"
"The new battlefield air-defense report. I never could understand why they bother. They can read it in Aviation Week before the end of the month anyway."
"Let's not blow the routine now, Mr. Henderson."
This time the message could be handled as routine intelligence traffic. It would be flagged to the Chairman's attention because it was "personal" information on a senior enemy intelligence official. Gerasimov was known in the higher echelons of KGB to be a man interested as much in Western gossip as Russian.
It was waiting when he arrived the next morning. The KGB Chairman hated the eight-hour time differential between Moscow and Washington--it made things so damned inconvenient! For Moscow Center to order any immediate action automatically risked having his field officers cue the Americans as to who they were. As a result, few real "immediate-action" signals were ever sent out, and it offended the KGB Chairman that his personal power could be undone by something as prosaic as longitudinal lines.
"Subject P," the dispatch began, the English "R" being a "P" in the Cyrillic alphabet, "is now the target of a secret criminal investigation as part of a nonintelligence matter. It is suspected, however, that interest in P is politically based, probably an effort on the part of progressive congressional elements to damage CIA because of an unknown operational failure--possibly involving Central Europe, but this is not RPT not confirmed. P's criminal disgrace will be damaging to higher CIA officials due to his placement. This station grades the intelligence reliability of the case as A. Three independent sources now confirm the allegations dispatched in my 88(B)531-C/EOC. Full details to follow via pouch. Station recommends pursuing. Rezident Washington. Ends."
Gerasimov tucked the report away in his desk.
"Well," the Chairman murmured to himself. He checked his watch. He had to be at the regular Thursday-morning Politburo meeting in two hours. How would it go? One thing he knew: it would be an interesting one. He planned to introduce a new variant on his game--the Power Game.
His daily operational briefing was always a little longer on Thursdays. It never hurt to drop a few harmless tidbits at the meetings. His fellow Politburo members were all men to whom conspiracy came as easily as breathing, and there hadn't been a government anywhere in the last century whose senior members did not enjoy hearing about covert operations. Gerasimov made a few notes, careful to choose only things that he could discuss without compromising important cases. His car came around at the appointed time, as always accompanied by a lead car of bodyguards, and sped off to the Kremlin.
Gerasimov was never the first to arrive, and never the last. This time he walked in just behind the Defense Minister.
"Good morning, Dmitri Timofeyevich," the Chairman said without a smile, but cordially enough for all that.
"And to you, Comrade Chairman," Yazov said warily. Both men took their seats. Yazov had more than one reason to be wary. In addition to the fact that Filitov was hanging over his head like a sword out of myth, he was not a full voting member of the supreme Soviet council. Gerasimov was. That gave KGB more political power than Defense, but the only times in recent history that the Defense Minister had had a vote in this room, he'd been a Party man first--like Ustinov had been. Yazov was a soldier first. A loyal Party member for all that, his uniform was not the costume it had been for Ustinov. Yazov would never have a vote at this table.
Andrey Il'ych Narmonov came into the room with his usual vigor. Of all the Politburo members, only the KGB Chairman was younger than he, and Narmonov felt the need to show bustling energy whenever he appeared before the older men who were arrayed around "his" conference table. The strain and stress of his job were telling on him. Everyone could see it. The black bush of hair was beginning to gray rapidly, and it also seemed that his hairline was receding. But that was hardly unusual for a man in his fifties. He gestured for everyone to sit.
"Good morning, Comrades," Narmonov said in a businesslike voice. "The initial discussion will concern the arrival of the American arms-negotiations team."
"I have good news to report," Gerasimov said at once.
"Indeed?" Alexandrov asked before the General Secretary could, staking out his own position.
"We have information that suggests that the Americans are willing in principle to place their strategic-defense program on the table," the KGB Chairman reported. "We do not know what concessions they will demand for this, nor the extent of the concessions in their program that they are willing to make, but this is nevertheless a change in the American posture."
"I find that difficult to believe," Yazov spoke up. "Their program is well along--as you yourself told me last week, Nikolay Borissovich."
"There are some political dissenters within the American government, and possibly a power struggle under way within CIA itself at the moment, we have just learned. In any case, that is our information, and we regard it to be fairly reliable."
"That is quite a surprise." Heads turned to where the Foreign Minister was sitting. He looked skeptical. "The Americans have been totally adamant on this point. You say 'fairly reliable,' but not totally so?"
"The source is highly placed, but the information has not been adequately confirmed as yet. We will know more by the weekend."
Heads nodded around the table. The American delegation would arrive noon Saturday, and negotiations would not begin until Monday. The Americans would be given thirty-six hours to overcome their jet lag, during which there would be a welcoming dinner at the Academy of Sciences Hotel, and little else.
"Such information is obviously a matter of great interest to my negotiating team, but I find it most surprising, particularly in view of the briefings we've been given here on our Bright Star Program, and their counterpart to it."
"There is reason to believe that the Americans have learned of Bright Star," Gerasimov replied smoothly. "Perhaps they have found our progress sobering."
"Bright Star penetrated?" another member asked. "How?"
"We're not sure. We're working on it," Gerasimov replied, careful not to look in Yazov's direction. Your move, Comrade Defense Minister.
"So the Americans might really be more interested in shutting our program down than in curtailing theirs," Alexandrov observed.
"And they think that our efforts have been the reverse of that." The Foreign Minister grunted. "It would be nice for me to be able to tell my people what the real issues are!"
"Marshal Yazov?" Narmonov said. He didn't know that he was putting his own man on the spot.
Until now, Gerasimov hadn't been sure about Yazov, about whether he might not feel safe taking his political vulnerability over the Filitov matter to his master. This would give him the answer. Yazov was afraid of the possibility--CERTAINTY, he corrected himself, Yazov has to know that by now--that we can disgrace him. He's also afraid that Narmonov won't risk his own position to save him. So have I co-opted both Yazov and Vaneyev? If so, I wonder if it might be worth keeping Yazov on after I replace the General Secretary... Your decision, Yazov ...
"We have overcome the problem of laser power output. The remaining problem is in computer control. Here we are far behind American techniques due to the superiority of their computer industry. Only last week, Comrade Gerasimov furnished us with some of the American control program, but we had not even begun to examine it when we learned that the program was itself overtaken by events.
"I do not mean this to be criticism of the KGB, of course--"
Yes! In that moment Gerasimov was sure. He's making his own overture to me. And the best part--no other man in the room, not even Alexandrov, understands what just happened.
"--actually, it illustrates the technical problem rather clearly. But it is only a technical problem, Comrades. This one, too, can be overcome. My opinion is th
at we are ahead of the Americans. If they know this, they will be fearful of it. Our negotiating position to this point has been to object to space-based programs only, never ground-based, since we have known all along that our ground-based systems have greater promise than their American counterparts. Possibly the change in the American position confirms this. If so, I would recommend against trading Bright Star for anything."
"That is a defensible opinion," Gerasimov commented after a moment. "Dmitri Timofeyevich has raised a thoughtful issue here." Heads nodded around the table--knowingly, they all thought, but more wrongly than any would dare guess--as the Chairman of the Committee for State Security and the Minister of Defense consummated their bargain with nothing more than a glance and a raised eyebrow.
Gerasimov turned back to the head of the table as the discussion went on around him. General Secretary Narmonov watched the debate with interest, making a few notes, not noticing the gaze of his KGB Chairman.
I wonder if that chair is more comfortable than mine.
19.
Travelers
Even the 89th Military Airlift Wing worried about security, Ryan was glad to see. The sentries who guarded the "President's Wing" at Andrews Air Force Base carried loaded rifles and wore serious looks to impress the "Distinguished Visitors"--the U.S. Air Force eschews the term Very Important Persons. The combination of armed troops and the usual airport rigamarole made it certain that no one would hijack the airplane and take it to ... Moscow. They had a flight crew to accomplish that.
Ryan always had the same thought before flying. As he waited to pass through the doorway-shaped magnetometer, he imagined that someone had engraved on the lintel: ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE. He'd just about overcome his terror of flying; his anxiety now was of something else entirely, he told himself. It didn't work. Fears are additive, not parallel, he discovered as he walked out of the building.
They were taking the same plane as the last time. The tail number was 86971. It was a 707 that had rolled out of Boeing's Seattle plant in 1958 and had been converted to the VC-137 configuration. More comfortable than the VC-135, it also had windows. If there was anything Ryan hated, it was being aboard a windowless aircraft. There was no level jetway to traverse into the bird. Everyone climbed up an old-fashioned wheeled stairway. Once inside, the plane was a curious mix of the commonplace and the unique. The forward washroom was in the usual place, just across from the front door, but aft of that was the communications console that gave the plane instantaneous, secure satellite-radio links with anyplace in the world. Next came the relatively comfortable crew accommodations, and then the galley. Food aboard the airplane was pretty good. Ryan's seat was in the almost-DV area, on one of two couches set on either side of the fuselage, just forward of the six-seat space for the really important folks. Aft of that was the five-across seating for reporters, Secret Service, and other people considered less distinguished by whoever made such decisions. It was mainly empty for this trip, though some junior members of the delegation would be back there, able to stretch out a bit for a change.
the Cardinal Of the Kremlin (1988) Page 39
