Palace of Treason

23

Hannah Archer had been busy. For four nonconsecutive days in the past week she had made careful surveillance detection runs of five, six, four, and three hours, determining not only her status — that is, whether she had trailing surveillance that day — but quantifying with eyes and instinct increasingly honed on the street what sort of surveillance might be on her. It was a good bet that she was still low on the FSB priority list, but since her arrival she had seen a slight incremental increase in coverage on her. Some FSB desk officer probably had picked her file and thrown it into the “check activity” pile in the “foreigners” box.

To COS Moscow’s annoyance, Hannah regularly cabled detailed descriptions to Headquarters of what she saw on the street. Vern Throckmorton thought he should be doing the reporting on security conditions, but Hannah deferentially paid him no mind and filed weekly cables to Benford, per the latter’s instructions. COS brooded about it but let it go, wary of the savant’s mercury-switch temper. Never mind, both Benford and Hannah knew that surveillance activity was a delicate barometer of counterintelligence danger — whether the Russians’ tails were up, whether they were on the scent, whether they were pulling on a string — and Benford now had to worry about DIVA.

Even if her operational act for a given day simply was to drive by and load/unload one of the SRAC receivers she herself had buried around Moscow, she had to know what sort of ticks were on her, what sort of gap they were giving her, whether they were tired and bored or riled and skittish. Passing an invisible SRAC site under trailing surveillance was nothing like meeting a source face-to-face, but Jesus, you still had to do it perfectly, still had to keep your shoulders square, look straight ahead, snap-check your mirrors, then fire the precisely timed shot with a hand casually inside the bag, remembering not to jackrabbit away after passing the site, and it was very preferable not to rear-end the Muscovite car ahead of you — little things that tech-savvy surveillance teams watch for, one lane over and three cars back, looking inside your vehicle with binoculars.

God, she loved the street, basked in the rhythms of it, kept her window down despite the cold to hear the sounds of it. On several nights she experienced what Jay, her internal operations instructor, had told her sporadically occurs in case officers under surveillance: a state of grace where she became one with the grim unshaven, unwashed men in the cars with the radios hot under the dashboards. On those nights, her transported spirit rode silent in the musk-ox backseat with them, listened to the clicks and squelch breaks, heard the muted profane comments, understood how they followed her that night.

One foggy evening she would hear the tire squeals of parallel coverage, glimpsing the tell-tale sidelights of cars on flanking streets keeping pace with her. Another night she saw — no felt — them leapfrogging, her mind riffling through the growing catalog: There’s Oscar and Mustache Man, you switched off your left headlight, naughty, the bread truck we saw last week, boys, wipe the smudges when you take off the roof rack, coming up to the intersection and… there you are Matinee Idol, you should have waited behind the bus, never mind, I love you guys, come on, I’ll go home early tonight so you all can rest.

And the worst nights were when they weren’t there, when the boys had abandoned her for another rabbit, and Hannah was fitful and lonesome. Those were the days when she gripped the wheel: Okay fuckers, are you using the Doomsday Maneuver, so perfect that no one can fathom how you do it, no one can see it to beat it, and you’re trying to catch DIVA, and kill her, and all that stands against your unshaven, flat fucking Slavic faces sinking your mandibles into the agent, my agent, is my gas pedal, and the narrow rippled mirrors on this chirping little hatchback, and my strontium-fortified cooz, and you guys cannot have her, it’s not going to happen.

Hannah knew that this shit, unrelieved, made you a little twitchy. Just look at Janice and Benford at Headquarters. She noted to herself that Nate wasn’t twitchy at all, at least not in the bad sense. She thought of him all the time, but there was no question of sending him a friendly email, even a secure internal message. Too ex-lover, too possibly misunderstood.

She needed a friend: The catechism was to stay away from the other officers in the station — preservation of cover, avoid contamination, compartmentalize your individual activities. There were some workmates from State, from her consular cover job in the embassy, but no real social prospects. Moscow was a nonfrat post, so unless she wanted to bench press an eighteen-year-old, off-duty American Marine security guard, it would be evenings in the embassy housing compound, sitting on kilim pillows around a coffee table eating cheese and crackers with six earnest State Department third secretaries listening to the new commemorative Joni Mitchell CD and wondering why the hostess, an overly dramatic thirty-seven-year-old global studies major from Mount Holyoke named Marnie, wore a beaded peasant necklace with an oversized wooden M.

Stop it. Eighteen months left in this Moscow tour, with a hinny mule of a COS on one side of the office trailer and tipsy, nicotine-saturated DCOS Schindler hanging upside down from the ceiling on the other. And scores of lynx-eyed FSB surveillants waiting for her to come out and play on the street. Hannah had accomplished what Benford had asked her to do: DIVA had SRAC and could talk to CIA securely in Moscow, a towering if jeopardous triumph. At the end of her first year, Hannah would be due an R&R break. Rest and relaxation, at a location of her choice. Certainly home to New Hampshire, but maybe somewhere else, say, Greece, for a bit of sun and sea. And a bit of Nate?

“Hi, Dad,” said Hannah, sitting in her darkened apartment, bathed in the light of the computer screen. The jumpy images of Hannah’s mother and father in their sunny New Hampshire kitchen smiled back. It was morning back home in Moultonborough.

“How are you, Hannah?” said her mother. “Keeping warm over there?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” said Hannah. “I bought a big brown furry hat. It’s dreadful — muskrat I think — but warm.”

“Are you eating well?” said her mother. She had mailed a box of cookies last month.

“Don’t worry,” said Hannah. “The commissary has got everything, peanut butter, bologna, Velveeta.” She dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand. This ghastly prattle was the best she could do: Before leaving for Moscow she had told her parents on no account to refer to or to ask about her job. Never. They knew where she worked. Her parents had stared at her, unhappy and aghast, when Hannah said the Russians were always listening. Tonight the FSB techs would be watching the same images of her parents, hearing the same conversation. But not to use Skype as every other embassy employee did (with abandon) would be unexplainable and interpreted only one way: She’s a spook, deploy more surveillance.

“Aren’t there restaurants over there?” asked her father. Hannah smiled. He was role-playing the goofy New England hick. Careful, Daddy, she thought.

“Oh sure,” said Hanna. “A bunch of us go out and try local dishes. It’s a lot of fun. There’s a dish with lamb and eggplants called chanakhi, it’s pretty good.” Hannah wondered if the transcribers would note that the Georgian stew had been Stalin’s favorite.

“It sounds heavy,” said her mother. God. Hannah ached to tell her father what she was doing, how she had been selected and trained to beard the Bear in his own lair, about what she had accomplished. She knew he loved her and was proud of her. But her triumphs could not be celebrated. “Get used to it,” Benford had said before she left. “Self-abnegation builds character.” Whatever that meant.

“I should sign off now,” said Hannah. “It’s pretty late here.” Her hand twitched on the mouse to click the disconnect icon.

“I hope you’re getting enough sleep,” said her mother. “Do you need anything, a warm nightgown, snuggly slippers?” The eavesdropping, slack-jawed louts with the earphones would be making jokes tomorrow about snuggly slippers.

“Nope, I have everything I need,” said Hannah. “I’ll talk to you guys next week,” she said. Her mother blew a kiss, got up, and moved off-camera. Her father stayed still, looking at her through the screen. Careful Daddy, Hannah telegraphed.

“Good talking to you, baby girl,” he said. “You take care over there. Love you.”

“Bye, Daddy,” said Hannah. He means give ’em hell, she thought. That’s just what I’m doing, Daddy.

In Headquarters, Benford had read Hannah’s cables, icily impressed. She had performed well, he knew, and DIVA’s SRAC system was working beautifully, full-out. Hannah had cased superior sites, her surveillance detection runs were nearly perfect, and she was a brick on the street. So natural, so cool, in fact, that FSB surveillance apparently assessed her to be a low-ranking functionary in the embassy, a junior officer in personnel, and accordingly had deployed only sporadic “check-up” coverage on her. Most nights she was black — she was sure of it. And thank God that hammerhead COS had not interfered with her. Benford would keep his eye on Throckmorton.

The DIVA reporting (via SRAC bursts) about the mole TRITON and Russian attempts to discover the identity of LYRIC had torn away the rotten wainscoting to reveal a mass of termites. Big CI trouble. Benford looked dyspeptically at the Moscow cables again. If TRITON was inside the Agency, he would not see these DIVA reports — Benford hurriedly had invoked a dedicated compartment to limit distribution to himself, three officers in CID, and the new chief of ROD, Dante Helton.

With sandy hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and the wry look of a dissolute academic, Helton was relatively young for a division chief, having started his career in communist Eastern Europe as a junior officer. Helton once told Benford that ops in the former East Bloc in the Wild West days were every bit the challenge of Moscow, with the added dimension that your host country adversaries — from intel service chiefs and planners all the way down to surveillance personnel — were the inheritors of brilliant national patrimonies from Poland (Chopin) to Czechoslovakia (Freud) to Hungary (Teller) to Romania (Vlad the Impaler). They were devilishly smart as well as committed. Helton had operated in Warsaw under murderous pressure — his surveillance team, eventually driven into a rage by Helton’s endlessly smooth manipulation of them, had one December night in 1987 flattened the roof of his Polski Fiat 125 level with its doors with coal shovels. The next evening he fucked them all over again.

Benford sat in his littered office with Helton and Margery Salvatore, a CID maven whose Sicilian ancestors, Benford was convinced, must have included the Fisherwife of Palermo who in 1588 claimed to have flown on goats with local witches. Margery could figure things out, complicated things, and Benford wanted her insights. He likewise had summoned Janice Callahan. She had not yet arrived, to Benford’s annoyance.

“If it’s all right with you two, I will offer preliminary comments until Janice arrives.” He bellowed through the door to his secretary, the one with the fluttering eyelid. “Tell Callahan to come instantly. If she is en route, tell her to begin running.” He looked at Dante and Margery for any sign of disapproval or unease, and saw none. Benford registered that he was known as a temperamental crank, but was agnostic about it.

“I am going to Athens in several days to consult with Station and to participate in the debriefing of DIVA,” said Benford, running nervous fingers through his unruly salt-and-pepper hair, inadvertently creating a modified Mohawk ridge on one side of his head. Normal: Dante and Margery did not blink.

“Only a few agents — all of then retired or dead — in the pantheon of Russian operations have been able to report with the scope and potential that DIVA is displaying. The fortuitous upcoming opportunity for a personal meet will, I expect, provide abundant detail.” The door opened and Janice, ice-tea cool in a leopard-print wrap dress and Jimmy Choo black mules, ambled in. Benford scowled at her. “What took you so long?” said Benford. Janice looked around for someplace to sit — Dante and Margery had cleared the two frayed chairs of newspapers and boxes. The only other perch — a small sway-backed couch — was brimming with more files.

“If I run, my dress falls off and these shoes come off my feet, Simon,” Janice said absently, running a hand through her hair and looking around. “I keep forgetting to bring a camp stool when I come to your office.” Benford watched her as she cleared a space for herself. A small avalanche of files hit the floor. She leaned down to pick them up, her cleavage revealed exponentially. Helton studiously looked away.

“As I was saying, DIVA is a fitting successor to MARBLE, as well as a testament to his far-sightedness, God rest him,” said Benford. The room was silent. Every one of them had come up the ranks by reading the MARBLE omnibus.

“We now have to consider several matters,” he said. “At this time I will not discuss DIVA’s contribution to the Iranian nuclear covert action, nor her success in coming to the favorable attention of the Russian president.”

“Now that you mention it, getting chummy with the president is a contact sport,” said Margery. “We could jeopardize her continued access and well-being if he loses interest in her and sidelines her. Even Vladimir’s wife, Putina, eventually got the heave-ho.”

“The prospect of DIVA becoming a favored confidant to the president is enormous,” said Benford.

“‘Favored confidant.’ Simon, what’s that mean exactly?” said Dante. “You want DIVA to seduce the president?”

“Calm yourselves,” said Benford. “We will exploit what we can with due consideration to protecting our clandestine reporting source.” He glowered around the small office. It’s why he liked these officers, they gave him shit. He began again, his clockwork mind driving without pause the pinions and keys and ratchets in his brain.

“Let’s review. One: We know that the Russians have begun receiving truncated reports from someone code-named TRITON. Two: The Russians do not yet know TRITON’s identity. Three: TRITON has reported to the Center that CIA has recruited a GRU source on military/scientific intelligence, and has provided our internal cryptonym — LYRIC. Four: SVR Rezident Yulia Zarubina continues to meet a transparent air force double agent to enable intel exchanges with TRITON. Five: A recently recruited SVR source was suddenly recalled from Caracas. That agent’s status is unknown.” He looked around the room.

“Does anyone outside CIA know the LYRIC crypt?” asked Margery. They all knew internal cryptonyms were sacrosanct, but they also knew that they were often mentioned in interagency settings.

“With the wide readership of LYRIC’s reporting, and the frequent community meetings about his intelligence, it is possible, perhaps likely, yes, that the LYRIC cryptonym is known outside this building,” said Benford.

“And DIVA has reported that this TRITON is using the US Air Force double agent operation as a conduit to Zarubina?” said Helton.

“Correct. I hope to learn more about how this is done when we speak to her,” said Benford.

“Okay,” said Helton. “But that means TRITON could be in the military, here in Langley, in the White House, on the NSC, on the Hill, or an aerospace contractor in California.”

“Also correct,” said Benford. “The hunt for this mole would by necessity begin on quite a broad scale. Manpower constraints would be a consideration.”

“We could be working on this for months,” said Margery, imagining the task forces, the damage assessments, the production reviews. A mess.

“Years,” said Benford.

Helton looked at Margery. “That’s not the worst of it,” he said. “If the Caracas recall is because of TRITON, that would suggest he’s inside this building. The recruitment is too new, that case wasn’t known outside Headquarters.”

“Well, unless we hear that our Caracas agent is on a meat hook in Butyrka prison, we won’t know,” said Margery.

“And we do not have the luxury of time,” said Benford, fidgeting with a pencil on his desk. “If TRITON is among us, and well placed, and reading material across distinct disciplines — military, political, scientific, geographic — he could hamstring the entire operations directorate.”

“And kill scores of agents,” said Margery. She had worked in China operations in the early years and knew the list of agents “not returned, no contact, presumed compromised” by heart. She still thought of some of them occasionally. They all did.

Benford looked over Helton’s shoulder at Janice Callahan, sitting quietly with mahogany legs crossed, arms outstretched along the back of the couch.

“Anything to add?” said Benford.

“Obviously,” said Janice, “we have to find this unpleasant traitor as soon as possible.” Benford’s fuming silence was more appalling than his usual red-faced rants.

“Thank you, Janice,” Benford said with elaborate irony. “How do we do it?” There was that tick-tock silence in the room, the second before the thermobaric vapor cloud ignites.

Janice lifted one leg and examined her shoe. “It might be easier than we think,” she said. Benford stilled an impulse to rise from behind his desk, pull his hair, and gyrate. He instinctively cut Janice — all of these friends — some slack: Janice too had walked down dripping alleyways in rusty iron cities with the footsteps echoing behind her.

“How. Do. We. Do. It?” said Benford.

“Starve a cold and feed a fever,” said Janice, looking at him through her lashes and flashing her trademark smile.

In a heavy Dutch oven (or tagine) brown cubes of lamb that have been rubbed with salt, pepper, oil, paprika, and red pepper flakes. Add sliced onions and garlic and sauté until soft, then add chopped basil, parsley, and dill, followed by stewed tomatoes, their liquid, and red wine vinegar. Nestle cubed eggplant and cubed potatoes into the stew, and add water to cover. Put the lid on and simmer on low heat until the lamb is tender, the vegetables are soft, and the juices are thickened. Garnish with chopped parsley.