Agents of Innocence

18

Washington; April 1970

Rogers was summoned to Washington three weeks later. The Operational Approval branch didn’t like his plan of action. Neither did John Marsh, the operations chief of the NE Division, who urged Stone to recall Rogers for “consultations.”

It was the first real rebuff Rogers had faced in a career that, until then, had been a steady progression of successes and commendations. Hoffman tried to assure him that being summoned home was part of the game, a rite of passage in mid-career. They didn’t take you seriously in the front office until they had hauled you on the carpet and given you a lecture. Anyway, Hoffman said, if Rogers wanted to play it safe, he should have chosen another career.

Hoffman was kind enough not to add: I told you so. But Rogers could hear him thinking it anyway.

Rogers dreaded the trip. He was edgy at home with Jane, distant in their final few nights together, restless and temperamental even around the children. He didn’t like being second-guessed, especially by people who hadn’t recruited an agent of their own in years. He also didn’t like to be reminded that he was in mid-career, no longer a prodigy, exposed to attack from people back home who regarded him as a threat or a rival. Rogers liked to keep his life in neat compartments. The biggest one, called work, had suddenly passed out of his control.

Rogers tried to relax on the airplane. He had a few drinks. He thought of his athletic exploits in high school. He reminisced about old girlfriends. He reviewed in his mind some of the intelligence operations for which he had been commended in the past.

On the Paris-Washington leg of the flight, Rogers struck up a conversation with an attractive French woman, blond and blue-eyed, in her mid-thirties.

She was carefully coiffed and dressed in an expensive tweed suit. When she moved, Rogers thought he could hear the rustle of her undergarments.

Rogers asked the woman why she was travelling to America. Business or pleasure?

“Pleasure,” said the woman, drawing out the syllables of the word. Rogers heard the sound of silk and satin as she adjusted herself in the seat.

“Any plans?” asked Rogers.

“We shall see,” said the woman.

She was the wife of a French industrialist, she explained. A flat on the Isle Saint-Louis, too many parties, too many responsibilities. She was tired of Paris and wanted a holiday in America.

Rogers found the woman overwhelmingly attractive. When she leaned forward to talk to him, he could see the fine white powder of her makeup, the gloss of her lipstick, and the fullness of her breasts. She had the perfect manners of a woman kept for the pleasure of a refined and wealthy gentleman.

As they were leaving the plane, Rogers, without quite knowing why, asked for the name of her hotel.

The woman blushed and averted her eyes but said quietly, “The Madison.” She handed him a card with her name: Veronique Godard.

“Shall I call you?” asked Rogers, taking the card.

“As you like,” said the French woman, closing her eyes as she spoke.

Rogers was staying at a cheap hotel in Arlington where the agency booked people who were home on TDY. He checked in, called several friends to announce his arrival, and took a stroll across the Key Bridge to Georgetown.

He sat in a bar debating whether to call the woman from the plane. It felt strange even to be asking himself the question. He was monogamous, for reasons of personal sanity as well as security. The conviction that he was happily married was central to his sense of well-being. But he felt a restlessness, a pull toward adventure and doom, an impulse like the feeling one gets occasionally on a high balcony looking out over the edge of the railing.

Jump, said Rogers to himself. He saw the French woman in his mind’s eye, arrayed on a bed of soft pillows and white linen.

He went to the phone and dialed the number of the Madison.

I’ll invite her to dinner, Rogers told himself. Who knows what will come of it? We’ll have a meal together. An innocent flirtation.

“Good evening, the Madison,” said the hotel operator.

“The room of Madame Godard, please,” said Rogers. He felt as nervous as a teenager on his first date.

Ring-ring, ring-ring.

What would he say when she answered? Hello. I am infatuated with you. I can’t get you out of my mind. No, obviously not that. He would think of something when she answered.

Ring-ring, ring-ring.

Rogers’s palms were sweating. He heard a voice. It was the operator.

“I’m sorry, sir. There’s no answer.”

Rogers went back to the bar and had another whisky. He waited thirty minutes and called the hotel again.

The same nervous wait. Again, no answer.

He decided to have dinner at his favorite French restaurant, Jean-Pierre on K Street. When he arrived and saw the soft banquettes and the delicate watercolors on the wall, he called the hotel again.

“Madame Godard, please.”

“One moment,” said the operator.

Ring-ring.

“Allo…”

It was a man’s voice. Rogers thought he could hear a woman’s voice in the background, singing.

“Allo?”

The man had a French accent.

Perhaps it’s just the bellhop, Rogers told himself.

“Hello,” said Rogers. “Is Madame Godard there?”

“Un instant,” said the man in French.

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice.

“Veronique,” said Rogers. “This is Tom, the man from the plane.”

“Who?” said the voice.

“The man from the plane,” repeated Rogers.

“Oh yes. Hello,” she said in a lower voice. She sounded embarrassed.

“I though perhaps you might be free for dinner this evening,” said Rogers.

She lowered her voice almost to a whisper.

“Not tonight. I am busy. Perhaps another time.”

“Yes, perhaps,” said Rogers, knowing that he wouldn’t call again.

“I am glad that you called,” said the woman in a voice that was barely audible. Rogers pictured her standing in a bathrobe, talking on the telephone in a whisper while her boyfriend jealously paced the room. It was a perverse sort of satisfaction, but not very lasting. The Frenchman, after all, had Madame Godard.

“I think you are beautiful,” said Rogers. What did it matter now? He could say whatever he wanted.

She gave a slight laugh that was, at once, a protest of modesty and a further seduction.

“Goodbye,” said Rogers.

He looked at the phone fondly, a last remnant of the woman, before hanging it up.

“C’est dommage,” Rogers said to the headwaiter as he returned to his seat. The waiter smiled indulgently.

Rogers ordered medallions of venison with chestnut puree, a house specialty. After drinking down most of a bottle of Burgundy, he wondered if perhaps there was an angel in heaven with the task of keeping him faithful to his wife, despite his own flights of desire. He tried to remember the priest’s admonition in school long ago. Was the adulterous wish the same in the eyes of God as the act itself? Surely not. But he couldn’t quite remember. Perhaps he was getting old.

A shuttle bus arrived at the hotel at 9:00 A.M. It had smoked windows, so that any KGB agents who happened to be cruising along the George Washington Parkway couldn’t be sure just who was taking the exit for the Central Intelligence Agency. The bus deposited Rogers in the basement of the building. He passed through security and took the elevator to the wing where the DDP and his minions planned their global escapades. A secretary in a distant outer office welcomed Rogers, gave him coffee, and took him down the hall.

The agency’s headquarters looked so clean and wholesome. Someone had once told Rogers that it had been designed to look like a university campus. A place where people smoked pipes and went to seminars. How distant that image was, Rogers thought, from the world that he inhabited.

“The problem with your operational plan is that there isn’t any plan,” said John Marsh.

Rogers listened impassively. He was seated in a conference room with Marsh and Stone. The room was decorated with photographs of past heads of the clandestine service. A gallery of chiselled features, measured judgments, stiff upper lips.

“I had thought these issues were resolved a month ago, only to find that they were not,” continued Marsh.

Marsh made an interesting contrast to Rogers. He was shorter, neater, tighter, meaner. Where Rogers looked relaxed and informal in his corduroy suit, Marsh was dressed fastidiously, like a salesman at a Brooks Brothers store. He wore a blue pinstripe suit, a white shirt with a button-down collar that rolled just so, a yellow tie, striped suspenders, and a pair of black tasseled mocassins. His hair was combed back tightly against his head. If someone had told Marsh that his head looked as smooth and hard as a bullet, he probably would have felt flattered.

“At the risk of sounding immodest,” Marsh went on, “I must point out that the central problem in the PRQ is the same one that I tried to bring to Tom’s attention in the cable to him in Kuwait. Which was, shall we say, mislaid.” He chided Rogers in the curt, bloodless way that a schoolteacher corrects a dull pupil.

“It shouldn’t be necessary to remind someone of Tom’s experience and standing…”

Rogers noted that he was being discussed in the third person. He had a momentary desire to punch Marsh in the face.

“…that the essence of any successful intelligence operation is control.

“An uncontrolled agent is like an unguided missile,” continued Marsh. “We have no hook, no handle, to manipulate his behavior. The uncontrolled agent can go running off in whatever direction he pleases, talk to whomever he likes, do or not do what we request-as it suits his fancy. In my opinion it’s better not to deal with such a person at all, regardless of how well placed he may be, because the potential for mischief is so great. I regard it as essential, especially in an organization like Fatah that is already thoroughly penetrated by the Soviets, that we work only with people who are under discipline.”

As he finished his discourse, Marsh took a white linen handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed it against his mouth. Rogers decided he had been right in a judgment he made several years ago: Marsh was a pompous ass.

Rogers offered a brief defense of his recommendations in the PECOCK case, repeating the same arguments he had made in the PRQ. He spoke calmly and carefully, trying to sound like himself and not a misshapen version of Marsh.

“Control would certainly be preferable,” said Rogers, “if it were possible. But I don’t think it is in this case. At least not yet. We’re dealing with someone at the top of his organization, who believes in his cause. He isn’t a defector. He isn’t a crook. He isn’t a pervert. If we want control, we should go after somebody who is less important and more vulnerable. Somebody who will be more susceptible to pressure.”

“That’s defeatism,” said Marsh. “You are assuming you can’t recruit the agent through financial incentives when, by your own admission, you haven’t really tried.”

You fool, thought Rogers. You wouldn’t know a potential agent if he walked up and bit you on the ass.

Rogers turned to Stone.

“All I can do is ask you to trust me,” Rogers said. “That may sound unprofessional. But I know this case, and I know what will work with this agent, and I hope you’ll trust my judgment.”

Stone, who had been listening silently to the two younger men, eventually spoke up.

“This isn’t an easy case,” the division chief said. “We all have an enormous regard for Tom’s work, and we also have a pressing need for the intelligence he can provide about the Palestinians. But our need isn’t so pressing that it makes sense for us to launch an insecure operation.”

Marsh nodded.

“I want to take a day or so to consider the issues that we have discussed and talk to a few people who are wiser than I am,” concluded Stone. “I’ll let you know my decision as quickly as possible.”

The meeting ended.

Stone asked Rogers to stay behind a moment.

As Marsh walked out of the conference room, he could hear the division chief inviting Rogers to join him for dinner that night at his club.

Dinner with Stone was a ritual, born of his early days in the officers’ mess of the prewar Army, nurtured in London during the war, sustained in the years since then at dinner meetings around the world with agents, case officers, and friends. Stone regarded dinner as a play in three acts and liked each detail of the production-each dish, drink, and morsel of conversation-to be precisely right.

Rogers arrived at the Athenian Club promptly at seven-thirty. It was a brick building in downtown Washington, squat and solid like a broad-beamed Victorian banker.

“Can I help you?” said the doorman, discreetly stopping Rogers at the foyer. The doorman had memorized several thousand faces. He knew everyone who was a member. More important, he knew everyone who was not, and each person in this latter category was greeted with the same polite but firm query: “Can I help you?” The doorman in this case helped Rogers to the lobby, where Stone was seated in a leather chair by the fire, reading a newspaper.

Stone rose and escorted his guest up a grand stairway to the drawing room on the second floor, where another fire was blazing and two big leather chairs awaited them. An old black waiter in a white coat arrived and took their drink orders.

“A dry gin martini,” said Stone.

Rogers, swept along by the tide of the encounter, ordered the same. They made small talk for forty-five minutes, talking about their respective families, current events, low-level agency gossip.

A waiter brought menus and both men ordered steaks. Stone selected a bottle of Bordeaux from the wine list. At eight-fifteen exactly, the older man rose from his chair and led his guest to the fourth-floor dining room, past acres of starched white linen, to a corner table. Dinner conversation was slightly more focused, touching on events in the Middle East, life in the Beirut station, the agency’s ups and downs.

“How is my old friend Frank Hoffman?” asked Stone after the two had eaten their steaks and drunk most of the wine.

“I didn’t know you were friends,” said Rogers. He found such a friendship hard to imagine.

“Yes indeed,” said Stone. “Frank saved me once from making a very bad mistake in Europe. I am still grateful to him.”

“What was the mistake?” asked Rogers.

“The details are a little fuzzy now,” said Stone. Like many CIA officers, he had a selective memory. He could recall with precision the specific facts that were required to deal with the problem at hand, and forget everything else.

“Tell me,” pressed Rogers. “I’d like to know.”

“We were in Germany together after the war,” explained Stone. “Frank was my security man. He had switched over not long before to CIA from the FBI.”

“So he really was in the FBI.”

“Oh yes. Didn’t you know? That’s why he makes such a point of wearing a gun.”

“He doesn’t talk much about his past, at least not to me,” said Rogers. “What happened in Germany?”

“We were trying to reconstruct some of the Abwehr networks in Eastern Europe. The Germans had had an especially good fellow in Prague. We managed to get him to the West for a chat. Hoffman and I spent an evening with him.

“I came away very impressed. He was an immensely clever man, who had wide contacts and appeared to despise the Russians. He seemed like a good bet to me. But Hoffman didn’t like him.”

“Why?”

“He wouldn’t really say at first. He just kept repeating that the agent didn’t smell right. Finally he explained that he thought the Czech agent was unreliable because he was unpatriotic. Any Czech who had worked for the Nazis was a dubious character, Hoffman claimed. If he had betrayed his own people once, to work for the Germans, then he could just as easily betray us. I disagreed. I thought we could use him for our purposes.”

“Who was right?”

“Hoffman, of course. The Czech was a bad apple. Because of Frank’s concern, we didn’t use him for any sensitive operations. But we kept him on the payroll for a year or so, until we learned from a KGB defector who had served in Prague that this same Czech had made a pass at them. We were very lucky. The whole thing could have been disastrous. Hoffman refused to take any credit. He said it had just been a lucky guess.”

Rogers pondered the story and deliberated a moment before asking his question.

“What would happen today?” Rogers asked cautiously.

“What do you mean?” queried Stone.

“What would happen today if someone objected to an operation because it didn’t smell right?”

“Ahhhh,” said Stone. “A good question. In all probability he would be called home immediately, for consultations.”

Rogers wasn’t sure whether Stone was joking.

“Times have changed,” said Stone. “The small and inexperienced organization that Hoffman and I joined doesn’t really exist anymore. It has been replaced by a bureaucracy, quite a large one, with its own rules and rhythms. In the old days it was possible to trust one’s instincts and hunches, because we didn’t really have anything else to go on. There was no body of cases and experience to draw on. Today there is.

“The sad part,” continued Stone, “is that it doesn’t do any good to regret the changes. It’s like regretting the passing of time. As organizations grow, they change in character. They develop their own systems and routines. A bureaucratic culture emerges, with rewards for people who play by the rules and punishments for those who don’t.”

“Unfortunate,” said Rogers.

“Unfortunate, but inevitable. This is the life cycle of a bureaucracy. Supple in youth. Rigid in middle age. Weak and decaying in old age. Organizations are like any other sort of animal. Their strongest instinct is to survive and reproduce themselves. It may be that the problems are greater in a secret organization like ours, where the bureaucratic culture is sealed off from the outside. But they aren’t fundamentally different.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Rogers.

“Take risks. Lean against the wind,” said Stone. “Listen to correct advice and ignore incorrect advice.”

“How do you know the difference?”

“Let us order dessert, shall we?” said Stone.

When the dessert dishes had been cleared, Stone finally got down to business. He led Rogers to a small private room on the third floor, ordered two brandies from the waiter, and closed the door. He offered Rogers a cigar-a Cohiba, Castro’s brand, smuggled from Cuba-and lit one for himself. It was a signal that the serious part of the evening was about to begin.

“I regard you as the ablest case officer we have in the Middle East at present,” Stone began warmly. “I also regard you as a kindred spirit and an example of what is best in our business. For these reasons, I very much want you to succeed in your current operation.

“The course of action you are proposing is unorthodox, as our friend Mr. Marsh took such pains to demonstrate this morning.”

Stone raised his eyebrow slightly when he mentioned the name, as if to say that he, too, found his operations officer a bit of an ass.

“Without endorsing Marsh’s conclusions, I think it’s important that you understand why he spoke as he did about control. He was right. Control is the soul of what we do. Perhaps you recall the passage in King Lear where Edgar observes that ‘Ripeness is all’?”

Rogers nodded yes.

“Well, in our business, we might well say: ‘Control is all.’ Control of ourselves and others.

“Let me tell you a brief story that will illustrate my point. It is about one of our illustrious British ancestors in the SIS, Commander Mansfield Cumming, the man who first took the designation of ‘C.’ He has come to be regarded as an eccentric, an oddball who signed his correspondance in green ink and tapped absent-mindedly on his wooden leg.”

“His wooden leg?”

Stone nodded and continued.

“ ‘C’ rarely told people how he had lost that leg, but the tale was recounted years after his death in a friend’s memoir. One day in 1915 in France, the old man and his son were taking a drive. Their car hit a tree and overturned, mortally wounding the boy and pinning ‘C’ by the leg. The father heard his son’s cries for help, but he could not free himself from under the wreckage of the car to help the boy. In desperation, he took out his pocket knife and hacked at his leg-his own leg-until he had cut it clean off.”

“With a knife?”

“With a pocket knife. Then he attended to his dying son.”

Rogers took a deep breath. Stone took a drink from his snifter of brandy.

“I think of that remarkable story of courage and self-discipline whenever I consider the requirement for control in intelligence operations. We must control ourselves-and to the extent possible, our agents-as completely and cold-bloodedly as ‘C’ did that day.”

Stone drained his brandy glass and rang for another round. When it arrived, he closed the door firmly and settled back into his chair. He turned to the next stage of his argument, as neatly as if he was turning over a card in a game of blackjack.

“Control is not the only virtue, however,” said Stone with a smile. “Reliability is also essential, and it isn’t the same thing as control. I think some of our ‘purists’ often forget this distinction.

“Let me give you an example. In this business we have to deal with a spectrum of people…” Stone spread out his hands wide in front of him-“…from the man over here who refuses to work for you until you force him to cooperate, to the man over there who talks to you because he is your friend and he trusts you. You ‘control’ the first and not the second. But which one is more reliable?”

Rogers pondered the question. He thought he knew the answer.

“In our world,” continued Stone, “reliability is inevitably a question of many different shades of gray. To simplify our task in making judgments about people, I often recommend two sorts of yardsticks.

“The first is the quality and accuracy of the information the agent is providing. If it’s good information, people will usually overlook the operational details of how it was obtained. The second measure is to set practical tests that can establish an agent’s bona fides. Ask him to do something particular for you. Tell him you need a certain piece of information that only he can obtain. If he does what you ask, then you will develop confidence in him.”

Stone smiled contentedly and turned over his last card.

“This brings me to the question at hand, regarding your agent in Fatah. The information we have received from him thus far is solid stuff. Very promising. As you say, control may be impossible at this stage. But how can we answer Mr. Marsh’s concerns, and my own, and gain a greater measure of reliability and trust?”

“By testing him,” said Rogers.

“Just so. I believe we should set a small test for your man and see how he responds. It should be something that is in the interest of his organization as much as ours, so that he won’t feel like a traitor.”

“Any suggestions?” asked Rogers.

“Actually, yes. I do have a suggestion. From what I have read in the agent’s 201 file, I believe an appropriate target exists in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Here we have a radical pro-Soviet group, staging terrorist operations that undercut Fatah and challenge its position in the PLO. Your man evidently shares our view, because he has already passed along information to you about this group. Now I think you should tell him that we wish to go further. We want to plant a microphone in the offices of the DFLP in Beirut and we need his assistance.”

“It’s worth a try,” said Rogers. “But I have to tell you I think it’s a long shot.”

“That is not an adequate reason not to make the effort,” said Stone.

“Yes, sir,” answered Rogers. “How long will it take the Technical Services people to make the arrangements?”

“Actually,” said Stone with a slightly apologetic tone, “the arrangements are already being made. I asked several people from TSD to study the problem. They have a first-rate scheme. A paper-weight in the shape of a map of Palestine that would contain a microphone and transmitter. Irresistible for anyone in the PLO, they reckon.

“All your man has to do is put this device in the office of the fellow who heads the DFLP. He can give it to him as a present, or leave it behind by accident after a meeting, or sneak it into his office. Whatever he likes. It’s really quite a simple operation. Almost risk-free. Far less than we normally ask agents to do.”

“What if he says no?” asked Rogers. He didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Then we will have a bit of a problem,” said Stone. “Marsh will recommend that we make a more direct attempt to establish control.” Stone paused and gave a sad smile. “I will probably support his recommendation.”

“Understood,” said Rogers. “I’ll do my best.”

“You can pick up the little gadget tomorrow morning,” said Stone, his three-act play finally complete.