by John Gardner
They had gauged their victim well; played him with speed and dexterity. “Tell me more,” Passau said.
“And they told you more?” asked Herbie in the present.
“Some.”
“How much?”
“That this was something so secret, so sensitive, to United States’ security, that only four people in the world would know about it, apart from me.”
“Four. Only four people? They give you the names?”
“I knew them, all the time, under first names—obviously funny names: Matthew, Gregory, Duncan and Victor. Met them all over the years. It was contained. Four only. Matthew’s out now, retired, but I’m still in contact with him. The others I suspect have very senior positions. In their early sixties now, all of them, heading for retirement.”
“When did you last see any member of this little cabal?—Is good word, cabal?”
“I met with Gregory and Duncan after the last concert tour. After Budapest, Berlin, Sofia, Prague and Warsaw. This spring. Before the summer coup.”
Herbie nodded. “Sure, Lou. Budapest, Berlin, Sofia, Prague, Warsaw and Tel Aviv. I know about that. You saw them after?”
“Six hours. Playing games like they always did. Doing the runaround. All big secret stuff.”
“So what was the deal? The deal in 1959?”
“Do you know what an unwitting agent is, Mr. Passau?” Matthew asked him back on Corfu.
“Tell me.”
“He’s a guy you have under control, but he don’t know nothing about it.”
(“Matthew talked like that, Herb.”
“I know it.”)
“Explain please?” Passau asked Matthew.
Gregory answered. “He is a subject to whom we—the CIA—can feed ideas. He doesn’t know he’s being used, but there’s someone he trusts that we own. We feed him an idea, and he acts on it. Thinks it’s his own idea really. A very subtle exercise in control.”
“And you have someone like that?”
“Uh-huh. Yes.”
“A Senator? Someone in government?”
“Oh, someone in government, Mr. Passau, but not our government. This unwitting agent is Russian. Part of the Soviet administration. We can give him ideas.”
“So where do I come in?”
“We’re going to give him an idea about you, Maestro. We’re going to point out to him that you would make a very good Soviet spy. A Russian agent. If he then recruits you, we can pass anything we want through you to them, them being our main enemy. We can mislead them, misdirect them, give them a mass of disinformation.”
On Captiva Island the telephone rang and Herbie Kruger jumped, being hauled from Passau’s past to the present.
It was Art. “Got to meet you, Herb. This is very urgent. Ultra serious.”
(19)
THEY MET IN THE apartment below—the one Pucky had tented so that they could control the entire building. Big Herbie had checked out the place every night, regularly. Art arrived with a solemn, dedicated-looking young man who wore slacks, a turtleneck and a shiny electric blue nylon windbreaker. “Fart and it turns green,” Art said, trying to lighten the load. He sat down, gave a sigh, and ran his hands over his face. The young man walked around the apartment testing the doors and windows, looking in cupboards. Between doing these robotic chores he gave long, sideways looks at Herbie, who had pulled up a stand chair and settled his bulk onto it. A lot of Herbie projected over the sides, but he sat up straight, at attention.
“You do understand what we’re getting into, Herb?” Art finally asked. “You are reading the signals?”
“Started reading them before you, Art.”
“Recognize anybody?”
“Marty.”
“Okay. Right. Marty Foreman, wizard of the Soviet Office at Langley for longer than any of us care to remember. How many times have you heard him call himself Matthew?”
“Four thousand and two, but who’s counting? Old Marty used Matthew as his given name all the time when he didn’t want people to know him, so I don’t see why he’d change the pattern for Passau.”
“Right. Gregory is another matter. Mike Alfoot, Marty’s deputy for years; now the boss. Looking after agency people locked inside the crumbling empire. He’s the only senior man with any Native American blood in him. I nearly went through the roof when Passau brought him out of the past. The fool bragged about it thirty years ago in Corfu. You think he goes around D.C. fighting for Native American rights now?”
“Very much doubt it. You recognize the other names? Duncan? Vincent?”
“Vincent just might be Tony de Paul—short guy, with a big schnoz and an execrable taste in ties. Try that on for size with the Maestro. In the sixties they hadn’t really learned that to connect cryptos with their real names was not the wisest thing in the world. Like setting a lock with your date of birth.”
Kruger looked puzzled.
Art thought he saw the problem. “Execrable, Herb. Means …”
“I know what execrable means. Why Tony de Paul?”
“Vincent de Paul. Saint. Martyr, I think.”
“Oh, sure. Book of Comic Prayer; Missal …
“Yea, I know Tony de Paul. Also Soviet Office. Ran a couple of people over the Curtain, if I got the right one.”
“Ran a lot of people, Herb. Duncan, I don’t know, but you can bet your boots he was also Sov Office. What d’you make of the secret four scenario?”
“So secret only four people would know, apart from old Passau. Like a sore thumb, Art, sticks out. Sucks also.”
“We have to assume …”
“Assume nothing, Art.”
“This we can assume. Four of the Company’s inner sanctum have been running an agent who’s been recruited by KGB, and nobody’s supposed to know but them. Passau, gifted as he is, was probably too naive to understand what was happening. You get the feeling he enjoyed it all?”
“Had a whale of a time, I should think. He’s got a mind runs straight as an arrow where music’s concerned, but he enjoys intrigue. That’s how I read him.”
“And I wonder who this unwitting agent was? One of the bigwigs in East Germany, or higher up the chain, Moscow Center brass?”
“Why East Germany, Art?”
“Ursula. Your Ursula held his hand, ran his intelligence from eighty onwards. Just thought …”
“Don’t. She was Russian, Art, remember?”
“But worked out of Karlshorst. East Berlin.”
“Forget it.”
“We have her. I can set up a new line of enquiry via Gus.”
“Tell him to use the branding irons, the boot and the rack while you’re at it. This thing smells.” Kruger’s voice sounded like a dangerous buzz saw. He sighed, weary of everything. Art Railton gave him the kind of look usually reserved for people who stated the obvious. “Poor, maligned Jim Angleton,” he said. “Spent his life trying to find a mole in the agency. Went paranoid, near crazy, yet maybe, just maybe, he had a whole operation going on right under his nose.” James Jesus Angleton had been the CIA’s head mole-hunter for decades: a man obsessed with the idea that the agency had been penetrated by the Russian service. He died, fired from the agency and paranoid about the past.
Very quietly, Herbie quoted T. S. Eliot—
“These with a thousand small deliberations Protract the profit of their chilled delirium, Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled, With pungent sauces, multiply variety In a wilderness of mirrors. …”
“Perfect,” Art continued, as though he had not heard. “The Sov Office would tell everyone hands off, we have a long-term operation running here. If anyone from outside decided to take a look-see, they’d find the old guy doing antisurveillance for some Soviet debriefer one day. The next he’d be in a debrief, cozy at an agency safe house. ‘Our source,’ they’d say. ‘Keep off the grass, the Sovs think he’s theirs. Leave him be.’ Marty’s so far up the chain they might believe him.”
“Which means we should also believ
e him?”
Art made a tipping motion with his hand, palm down, fingers together. His eyes as restless as those of the young man.
“You still got a watch on this place twenty-four hours? Still looking after me?” Herbie as casual as jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt.
Art cut his eyes away. “Manpower’s stretched thin. People aren’t getting enough rest; not enough sleep. I have them there for most of the day. We’re checking always after midnight, for a couple of hours. Last two nights there’s been nobody watching between two to four in the morning. You noticed?”
“What you think?” He was not actually lying.
“You shouldn’t have noticed, Herb. These guys are good. You shouldn’t have seen them at all, but I suppose tired watchers aren’t reliable. Can you cope between, say, two until four in the morning?”
“Sure, no problem. Pucky and I’ll take care of it.” He shot a quick look at the young man who was standing by the door trying to pretend he was not hearing any of this. “Tell you what, Art. Do the thing with Ursula. Tell Gus to probe. Ask who ran him from Moscow Center. Whose boy they thought he was. She might not know because he’d been active for twenty years by the time she came on the scene but, what the hell, they might just have let her peep at the file. Stranger things happen. Who was head boy at Moscow Center in sixty?”
“In sixty, Shelepin, but in sixty-one it was his buddy, Semichasny. The pair of them pulled the silent coup. Searched the files, incriminated Khrushchev. Tapped his phones, then asked him to step aside, make room for Brezhnev.”
“KGB had its hands full at home. But they were cunning as cartload of monkeys. Sure, Art. Get old Gus to soften up Ursula. I’ll get on with the old guy now. Push him fast. Only thirty years to go.”
As he reached the door, the young man leaped to open it for him. “Mr. Kruger, sir?” He sounded almost reverential.
“That’s me, last time I looked.”
“Just wanted to say it’s an honor to be working with you, Mr. Kruger.”
“So what am I? A rock star?”
“No, sir. An inspiration, Mr. Kruger.”
Herbie shook his head, puzzled, and went back upstairs, muttering, “Inspiration … inspiration … oh for a muse of fire.”
Pucky had the percolator on, and he sat down again with Passau, observing that they could do another hour before lunch.
“Whatever,” Passau smiled. The signs of strain had passed. Maybe, Herbie thought, he’s got over the hump. Then, silently, in his head, he said, “Have I got news for him!”
“LOU, THE GUY you knew as Vincent? Was he short, with a big hooter?”
“Sorry, what is a hooter?”
“Schnoz; facial protuberance; proboscis; nose, like in German Schnauze, snout. A hooter is English slang, sorry.”
“Now you come to mention it, yea. Yea, Vincent had a big conkola.”
“Also wore ties of many colors?”
Passau gave a little shrug. The movement spoke of laughter. “Rainbows. Nudie girls on sky-blue-pink. If he’d ever worn a bow tie, it’d have lit up and spun around.”
“And what of Duncan? Scottish descent? Duncan of Lochayle? Wore kilts? What?”
“Duncan?” The old man was somehow questioning himself. Searching the great barrier reef that was his memory of other days and other times. “Duncan?” he questioned again. “Duncan was, how can I put it? Duncan was a silent partner.”
“You didn’t see him? You didn’t speak with him?”
“Sure, I saw him, talked with him, but I got the impression that Duncan was an observer.”
“Physical description, Lou.”
“Tallish, thinnish—gaunt is a good word: you know from gaunt?”
“Sure. Gaunt. Hollow cheeks, bones protruding.”
“Duncan, he had long hair for most of the time—during the sixties certainly; later he had it trimmed. Last time I saw him it looked quite respectable … Ah!” As though he had found the Holy Grail. “Best description was he didn’t fit. When the others wore suits, he had jeans and a leather jacket. When they came casual, he wore a suit. A cheap suit. Also he had rings on his fingers.”
“And bells on his toes, Lou?”
“Never saw his toes. But he had about six hundred rings on his fingers—I exaggerate, Herb, but they were brassy, showy, cheap, like a hippie. As he got older, some of the rings disappeared and he became a yuppie. Suits made to measure, better haircut, washed more often.”
Herbie nodded. In his head he said to himself, “Got him.” Bains. Urquart Bains. Soviet Desk’s fieldman elite. Seven languages, including Yiddish. German, Russian, Serbo-Croat and the rest. Given armfuls of jock-strap medals. Serviced agents from Poland to Minsk. Jesus, he thought, Urquart Bains was the CIA’s Soviet Office’s big time singleton. In and out, behind the Curtain, over the Wall, through the barbed wire. Go anywhere. Scarlet Pimpernel. Man of a thousand faces. Bains was involved in this? Art would be changing his shorts at this very moment if he had put a name to the description.
“You didn’t see Duncan as often as the other three?” he asked, hoping his voice sounded free of the shakes.
“You’re right, Herb. You’re not wrong. Duncan I saw about once, maybe twice a year, if that. Some years I never saw him.”
“So, Lou, what next? You came back to America and they treated you like the prodigal son.”
“Sure. Downhill all the way now. It’s all in the books. Concerts, operas, ballets, guest conducting, traveling the world. The Maestro of Maestros. You know it all.”
“That was surface stuff.”
“It was my life. My life’s work. The part that really mattered. Success. Great reviews. King of the hill.”
Herbie put on his patient voice. “Okay, Lou. We take that for granted. You are indisputably the greatest orchestra conductor of our time, bar none. You did it, and you did it your way, if you’ll excuse the language.”
“I did it, and it was hard work. Yet it was satisfying.”
“I need the stuff under the surface. The CIA made a pass at you. I know this as a fact. You said okay. I also know this as a fact.”
Passau was still off on his own. “You know I remained unmarried until 1981 also. An old man, yet Angela didn’t care about age. She was a willing victim. She was also worth it.”
“We’ll get to that. Tell me about the operational techniques. These four CIA people, they train you at all? Send you to the Farm?”
Passau chuckled. It was surprising what one night of rest had done. The old man was now as spry as he had been during their first days in Virginia. There was even a twinkle in his eye. “You’re being Tricky Dicky with me, Herbie. Think I don’t know where the Farm is? What it is?”
“Not a trick question, Louis. Did they give you any training?”
“Sure, all the fun of the fair. Odd days, sometimes weekends, when I wasn’t working or rehearsing or traveling. Sure, they taught me all that crazy spook stuff. I passed summa cum laude. Top of the form. M.S.A.”
“M.S.A.?”
“Master of Spook Arts.”
“And where did they do this training?”
“Wherever I happened to be. Mostly in New York. Keep cultivating friends at the top, they would tell me. Get in with the people who matter. If you meet a general, do him a favor; Senators were also good; Navy people, Pentagon, State, White House. Didn’t really worry them in the long run, because they always provided the stuff—the four of them. Herbie, for me it was a game. I knew the footwork, but it was like a hobby. I was never a bloody spy. They were the spies, shoveling what they called disinformation through me to the Russians. That’s why this whole thing was a farce. I only really became involved with what you might call intrigue right at the end. Sure, the thing during the war was on my conscience, but never this. It was playing games.” He took a deep breath. “Until the end, when some of the stuff didn’t match up; when I smelled spoiled fish and the Stretchfield guy—the writer—was going to go public about the Nazi thing. Then I began to w
onder, but it was too late. In the end I made my confession to you. What I got left? Maybe a year or two if I’m lucky.”
“By ‘stuff’ you mean the intelligence you handed over to the Russians?”
“Sure. That was the deal. I was working hard, also serving my country, being a superagent. Everyone loved me. We handed over chicken feed.
“Good times, Herb. Gone now. They’ve changed the goalposts, and the days of spying are coming into the twilight. Like you said when we were in Virginia, we’re dodos. Kaput. What was it all about, eh?” Pause. Count to ten. Big smile for the paying customers.
“Tell me about the training, Lou.”
“Training? Everything. We did codes and ciphers; surveillance—how to spot and how to throw. I learned all that tradecraft shit, sneaking around, looking in plate-glass windows, dead drops, brush passes, sign language, body language, things to say on the telephone. All the stuff that’s in the spy books, though they get a lot of that shit wrong, the writers of the spy books. I’m a connoisseur, Herb. Done it. Know it. Backwards and up my ass, okay?”
“I love you when you talk dirty, Lou. Okay. So how did the Russians get in touch? Letter, casual telephone call? Or did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John bless the bed that you got on?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes. Matthew and, I think it was Vincent … though it may have been Gregory, I forget. They told me what would happen exactly.”
“Exactly?”
“To the minute. Place, time, what the guy would look like.”
“And what did he look like?”
“Like a fucking stockbroker. Party at the Waldorf Astoria. End of sixty-one, November or December. I had done a guest spot. New York Phil at Carnegie Hall. Some benefit thing. Everyone there, Lenny, the whole bunch. Copland was there, because I did Appalachian Spring that night. Also did the Shostakovich Second Piano Concerto. I’d forgotten that; Lenny was the soloist. Great night. Plenty of glitz. Party afterwards at a thousand bucks a throw—except for people like me, Aaron and Lenny. Everybody. This guy comes over: fat, dressed to kill, fancy tux, gold dripping from his wrist-watch, cheeks smooth as a baby’s tush, full lips, maybe a bit too red.”
