Checkpoint Charlie

Charlie in Moscow

The plane delivered me to Sheremetevo at eleven Tuesday morning but it was past three by the time the Attaché’s car brought me to the Embassy: the Soviets get their jollies from subjecting known American agents to bureaucratic harrassment.

After my interminable session with insulting civil servants and the infuriating immigration apparatus I was dour and irritable and, overriding everything else, hungry.

As we drove in I had a look at the Embassy and saw the smudges above the top-story windows where the fire had licked out and charred the stonework. I made a face.

I introduced myself at the desk and there was a flurrying of phoning and bootlicking. I was directed to the third floor and managed to persuade one of the secretaries to send down for a portable lunch. Predictably I was kept waiting in Dennis Sneden’s outer office and I ate the sandwiches there, after which — 20 minutes having passed — I stood up on the pretext of dropping the lunch debris in the blonde receptionist’s wastebasket. When she looked up, startled, I said, “Tell him he’s kept me cooling my heels long enough.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I know you all resent my coming. But making me sore won’t help any of us. Punch up the intercom and tell him I’m coming in.” I strode past her desk to the door.

“Sir, you can’t—”

“Don’t worry, I know the way.”

Sneden was on the phone. He looked up at me, no visible break of expression on his pale features, and said into the mouthpiece, “Hang on a minute.” He covered it with his palm. “Sit down, Charlie, I’ll only be a minute.”

The blonde was behind me, possible trying to decide how to eject me by force. It would have been a neat feat in view of the fact that I outweighed her by two-and-a-half to one. After Sneden had addressed me with civility she changed her mind, made an apologetic gesture of exasperation to Sneden and withdrew.

He said into the phone, “Nothing we can do until we know more about it. Listen, Charlie Dark’s here, he just walked into the office. I’ll have to call you back — we should have an update later.... Right. Catch you.” He cradled it and tried to smile at me.

The chair was narrow; I had to perch. Through the high window I had a distant glimpse of the Kremlin’s crenelated onion towers.

Sneden looked pasty, his flat puffy face resembling the crust of a pie; I attributed the sickly look to chagrin over what had happened and fear for his job. I said, “I’m not necessarily here to embarrass you.”

“No?”

“The Security Executive — Myerson — wants a firsthand report. And I’m to lend a hand if it seems desirable.”

“Desirable to whom?”

“Me.”

“That’s what I thought.” He lit a cigarette. His fingers didn’t tremble visibly. “It was a freak.”

“Was it set? Arson?”

“We don’t know yet. It’s being investigated.”

“But there were Russian firemen inside the building.”

“Moscoe fire department. We had to. But not on the top floor. We handled that ourselves with portable extinguishers — it never got too bad up there, we caught it before it spread that far.”

“You know for a fact there’s no possibility any of them got up to the top floor, no matter how briefly?”

“No possibility. None. Our people were at the head of the stairs to cordon it.”

“I’ll accept that, then.”

“Thank you,” Dennis said. “I’m in charge of security here. I do my job.” But his eyes drifted when he said it; then he sighed. “Most of the time. As you know, there’s one point of uncertainty.”

“The safe on the third floor.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It was all in my report through the bag.”

“Go over it again for me.”

He said, “Charlie, what’s the point? I doubt anybody got into the safe. There’s no sign any thing’s been disturbed. But there’s a one-in-a-thousand chance that it happened and we have to be guided by that — we have to assume the safe was compromised.”

“Hell of an expensive assumption, Dennis.”

“I know. I can’t help it.”

“Files covering several current covert operations.”

“Ongoing operations, right.”

“Including the identities of at least eleven of our agents.”

“Yes. But everything’s in code.”

“Never was a cowboy that couldn’t be throwed, never was a horse that couldn’t be rode. Dennis, there never was a code that couldn’t be broke.”

“I know. But each operational file is kept in a different code. The Control on each operation has access only to his own codes.”

“Who assigns the codes?”

“I do. Part of my job.”

“Then nobody else can decipher more than one case-officer’s files without access to your code books?”

“Well, they’re not code books any more, they’re computer programs, but in essence you’re correct. Nobody can decode more than a few of those files at a time.”

“Unless they manage to break all the codes simultaneously,” I said. “If they breached those files with a camera we have to write off six current operations and eleven crucially valuable agents.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, Charlie, but only two of them are crucially valuable. The other nine are just nice to have but in the cruel impersonal terms of modern espionage they’re expendable.” He was fiddling with his windproof cigarette lighter, flicking the lid open and shut. “We’ve already taken preliminary steps to shut down the capers and cover our tracks.”

“Good.”

“The safe was unlocked — before, during and after the fire. In the excitement it didn’t occur to anybody to lock it. I guess that’s my fault; it’s my job to maintain security.”

“Your loyalty to your subordinates is commendable, Dennis, but it doesn’t solve the problem.”

Dennis patted ash ferociously from his cigarette, missed the ash tray and bent down to blow the ashes off the desk. I said, “Did the Comrades or did they not photograph the contents of the safe?”

“There’s no way to find out. Not for a while until we start getting feedback from them.”

“That could be too late. I’ll need to have a look at those files.”

I spent most of the night with the files and a brown bag full of cooling hamburgers from the cafeteria downstairs. By the end of it I realized why Myerson had picked me for this one. Whenever a job comes along that requires both ingenuity and mortal risk he likes to throw it at me because, whatever the outcome, he can’t lose. If I come a cropper then my embarrassment, injury, incarceration or demise will provide him with perverse satisfaction; if I succeed in bringing off the impossible then the success will reflect on Myerson and he will climb higher in the favor of the Langley executives.

The files offered me half a dozen covert capers-in-progress to select from. All of them were espionage operations involving hired Russians who’d been subverted by the American station operatives, usually for money, less often by means of blackmail or other shady coercions. None of them was selling his country out for ideological reasons; spies seldom do except in movies.

The eleven agents listed in the coded files from the Embassy’s safe were unimportant people for the most part — two of them were charwomen with access to certain wastebaskets; others were clerks, countermen, typists, a telephone repairman, a minor commissar’s chauffeur, a computer technician, a laboratory assistant.

I found possibilities in two of the six operations although the risks in both cases would be high: one misstep and I could find myself in the Lubianka dungeons with electrodes affixed to my tender parts. There were several KGB types who would delight in getting me into such a plight.

Dennis was still nervous. “I could be in bad trouble.”

“Take it easy. The worst you’ll suffer may be early retirement. You’ve only got ten months left anyway.”

“Just the same—”

“Don’t ask me to cover up anything, Dennis. I’m not in the whitewash trade.”

“I wouldn’t do that. What do you take me for? We’ve known each other too long for you to say that to me, Charlie.” But he said it too fast and I focused my gaze on the summary sheets so that I wouldn’t compound his guilt by witnessing it.

He annoyed me, putting his petty career concerns ahead of the job at hand, but it was understandable. A black mark on his service record this late in his career would hurt his chances to get a top job in civilian security; it could make the difference between the prestige positions in aerospace corporate counterespionage and the routine jobs with the security departments of small banks.

I took out one of the summary sheets. “We’ll concentrate on this one. It’s our best shot. The MIG-32 designs.”

“Why?”

“If they’ve learned about the leak they’ll plug it — start feeding us phony information.” I tapped the document and it made the flimsy flashpaper rattle. “You’ve got two people inside the MIG-32 program feeding us data on aircraft development and weapons systems. If the KGB got a copy of this file from our safe they’ll put surveillance on these two agents.”

“Maybe not. They may try to fool us by leaving the two alone.”

“Any of the other capers, yes. But this one’s too sensitive. They can’t afford not to plug a leak in the MIG-32 program. It’s the most advanced fighter-bomber design in the world. If they get it into production within the next few years they’ll be a dozen years ahead of us — unless we can build countermeasures around our stolen copies of their designs. With that much at stake they can’t play cute games with our intelligence people. If they know these two guys are working for us they’ll either double them or transfer them to a less sensitive sector to get them away from access to top secret data.”

“Well, if the two guys get transferred we’ll know about it.”

“Yeah.”

He said, “But how will we know if they’re doubled?”

“Why, we’ll ask one of them, Dennis.”

I gave it two days because I wanted to be sure the KGB had time to make their move if they were going to make one. Thursday after dark Sneden and I left the Embassy in an official limousine and led the Russian shadow-cars around the city a while. Then near the old Ekaterinburg Station we pulled around a corner far enough ahead to be out of their sight just long enough for the two of us to get out of the car and hide in the shadows while our driver went on toward the British Embassy, where by prearrangement he would enter the underground garage, wait three hours, then return along the same route to pick us up.

Free of the tail we walked four blocks along poorly lit streets to an unexceptional third-story flat that belonged to a French journalist who was away covering a trade fair in Riga. We’d had the flat swept for bugs that afternoon and in any case I carred a jammer in my briefcase. I don’t have any fondness for those gimcracks but sometimes there’s no choice.

Dennis made a drink and left me alone with it; he didn’t want Poltov to see his face. Poltov had been recruited by another Control and was run by a cutout, all standard procedure, and Poltov had no idea who his real boss was. It didn’t matter if he saw my face; I’d be out of the country soon anyway; but Dennis had to be protected — he was Embassy staff.

Poltov arrived at half past eleven. He was a neat small fellow with carefully combed grey hair and the conceited self-confidence of a Cockney pimp. He had something to do with computers — a fact that had made him a great prize to Dennis Sneden’s department because it gave Poltov access to every question, answer and program that went through the computer banks on the MIG-32 project.

He introduced himself and shook my hand; he seemed amused by my corpulence. He made himself a drink without asking. Cognac, I noticed — none of the domestic trash for him. He’d be much more comfortable in sharkskin than in the drab Moscow serge he wore; he had ambitions to be dapper. One day, with the money we were paying him, he’d find his way to Austria or Denmark and set himself up in luxury.

When he had tasted the cognac he smiled at me. He spoke a hard Kharkov Russian that I had a little trouble following. “May I ask who you are?”

“Call me Tovarich Ivanovitch if you like,” I said.

“Your accent is atrociously American.”

“I’m not much of a linguist. They gave me the eight-week course at the Army school in Monterrey. Sit down, Tovarich, and tell me what unusual things have happened to you in the past forty-eight hours.”

“Unusual? Yes — there’s been one thing.”

“What was it?”

“The summons to this meeting.” He smiled again, enjoying his little joke.

“Other than that, nothing out of the ordinary?”

“No.”

“No break in routine? No phone calls from strangers? No odd encounters? No questions?”

“Nothing.”

“Have you had security briefing? Do you know how to disclose a tail?”

“Yes. I know it if I’m being watched. I’m often watched, it’s part of the job. They’re clumsy idiots, most of them. I was tailed Monday when I left the computer building. Three men, one car. They shadowed me to the GUM store and then to my flat. I went to bed and in the morning they were gone. It was a routine check on my movements — it happens once or twice a week to all of us. May I ask the reason for these questions?”

“What would you say if I told you that some of the information you’ve been selling us is false?”

“I would say you are misinformed.”

“Poltov, if they’ve doubled you and you’re feeding us false information for them, we’ll have you terminated with extreme prejudice. You know the term?”

“Yes. I understand you have the responsibility to do that. But only if I have betrayed you. And I haven’t.”

“You’re too calm about it to suit me,” I said. “What, no indignation at the unjust accusation?”

Poltov smiled gently. “We’re accustomed to such charges here. Indignation is not a useful response. I am well paid for what I sell to you. My Swiss account grows nicely. I’ve never sold you false information. If I ever do, I shall expect you to teminate me.”

Beneath the fatalistic surface his smile was really quite bright and ingenuous.

Dennis was cautious. “Why should you believe him?”

“Partly intuition — he’s a game player, he enjoys the danger, but he’s not devious enough to play both ends against the middle. If he were crossing us he’d be nervous about it.”

“I still don’t see how—”

I said, “If they saw the files they know he’s working for us. And if they know he’s working for us they can’t afford knowingly to let him go on releasing accurate data to us. The project’s too vital to their security. Either they’ll falsify the information he acquires, or they’ll force him to discontinue delivering it. Either way we’ll know it’s blown.”

He managed a sickly smile. “I hope it turns out he’s clean.”

“Because if he’s clean then your record’s clean?”

“Charlie, I’m only human.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “The security lapse was there whether or not the Russians managed to take advantage of it.”

Brief anger flashed from him but then he slumped behind the desk. “I guess I knew that anyway. Listen — no hard feelings. I know you’ve been fair.” He flicked his windproof lighter open, ignited it and poked his cigarette into the flame.

That was when the phone buzzed. He picked it up, spoke and listened; I watched his face change in a violent exhalation of smoke. When he cradled it he looked angry, then crushed. “The bastards. Begorenko committed suicide this morning.”

“Begorenko?”

“One of our agents in the GRU. One of the names in the safe. Charlie, I think it must mean they got into the safe.”

It called for a council of war. Reinforcements were summoned from the Security Executive — young Leonard Ross flew in from Paris and then we were favored with the presence of Joe Cutter who arrived handsome and alert from Tokyo; finally on Saturday Myerson himself flew in over the Pole from Langley and we had a quorum. In the Embassy’s conference room the jammers were running and the blinds drawn.

First Sneden reported, bringing it up to date. “We lost another one last night. Rastovic jumped off the roof of a block of flats in Leningrad. Less than forty-eight hours after Begorenko’s death. Of course we don’t know if they killed themselves or if they were suicided by the Organs but means the same thing either way — we’re blown. Six operations, eleven operatives. Including the MIG-32 program.”

Ross: “Are we sure of that? It couldn’t be coincidence?”

Cutter: “Two dead out of eleven? Not a chance.”

Sneden: “I’m afraid Joe’s right. I feel miserable about this. It’s my fault — I was too lax in my guidelines for third-floor security. The safe should never have been unlocked.”

Cutter: “Why wasn’t it locked?”

Sneden: “Ease of access. We had five different Controls in and out of it all the time. Plus myself and occasionally the First Secretary. If we had to unlock the damn thing every time...”

Myerson: “All right, all right. Let’s hear from Mr. Dark.”

Me: “A couple of curious items. See what you make of them. Item one — evidence of arson. Traces of lighter fluid residue in the wastebasket where the fire started. Any comments?”

Cutter: “The fire had to be set by somebody inside. It was burning before the Russian firemen arrived. Elementary conclusion: a saboteur among us. Elementary question: to what purpose?”

Me: “Elementary answer: to cover something up and/or provide a distraction. Agreed?”

Myerson: “Go on, Charlie.”

“Me: Item two. As far as we know, the computer information coming through from agent Poltov is still clean. If not accurate it’s at least plausible to our scientists who’ve been analyzing it as it comes through. As of last night, when I had my third interview with Poltov, he claimed he’d been neither harassed nor approached.”

Ross: “How do we know he’s not lying about that? How do we know he hasn’t been doubled?”

Myerson: “Intuition, Charlie?”

Me: “No. Logic. If they knew he was feeding us they’d stop him or falsify the data. They’ve done neither. Therefore they don’t know he’s ours.”

Cutter: “Fascinating.”

Me: “I knew you’d be the first one to see the point, Joe. Your mind’s always six steps ahead of everybody else’s. Next to me you’re the best.”

Cutter: “I might put it the other way around, there, Charlie.”

Me: “You’d be wrong. Your talent’s equal to mine but I still have the edge in experience.”

Ross: “Well, maybe they only managed to break the codes that dealt with Begorenko and Rastovic. Isn’t that possible? Maybe they’re still working on the rest of the codes over at Cryptanalysis in the Arbat. Suppose they don’t break Poltov’s code until next week after we’ve cleared him? Then what?”

Me: “No. The Russians haven’t broken any of our codes at all. They haven’t had time. The fire was set Monday. Begorenko died Thursday night late, or if you prefer Friday morning. It takes longer than that to break a top-class code, even with the aid of the best computers. Unless you’ve got help from somebody on the other side.”

Cutter: “The two suicides, Begorenko and Rastovic — let me get absolutely clear on this. They were on separate capers? They had nothing to do with each other? They didn’t even know of each other’s existence? They had separate Controls, separate cutouts, separate and distinct codes?”

Sneden: “Correct. Total strangers to each other. One in Moscow, one in Leningrad.”

Myerson: “But they were both blown. And the only thing they had in common was that both their names were in the safe on the third floor.”

Ross: “Leaving us no choice. We’ve got to shut down all the operations. Including Poltov.”

Sneden: “Well, no. Charlie’s just got through saying Poltov’s secure. How can we shut him down? It’d be a disaster for us when we’re this close to getting the final data on the MIG-32. Nobody wants to close Poltov down. He’s the most valuable agent we’ve got anywhere in the world at this moment in time.”

Me: “I agree with Dennis. Poltov’s secure. I vote we let him continue running.”

Myerson: “I don’t follow your reasoning at all. How can we let him run? If it’s only a matter of time before they break the code on his file too—”

Me: “I told you. They don’t have Poltov’s file. They don’t have any files.”

Cutter: “Charlie’s right.”

Myerson: “Somebody please tell me what’s going on here.”

Me: “Dennis, you can tell him or I will.”

Cutter: “I think the cat’s got Dennis’s tongue. I guess you’ve got the floor to yourself, Charlie.”

Me: “All right. Not without regret. The Russians never got near the safe; if they had, Poltov would have been transferred, killed or doubled by now. Therefore the information on Begorenko and Rastovic was given selectively to the KGB by someone who didn’t mind betraying in essential information but balked at selling the hard stuff. It had to be someone inside this Embassy, of course — someone who set the fire so as to make it look as if the safe had been compromised. That way we wouldn’t look for a spy in our own ranks; we’d look for a spy in a Russian fireman’s uniform instead. That gets our culprit off the hook, covers his tracks. That’s what the distraction was for.”

Sneden: “That could have been anybody.”

Cutter: “Dennis, you’re the only one who had access to both codes — the two governing Begorenko and Rastovic.”

Me: “And you use that old-fashioned lighter, Dennis. Most of the other smokers here use matches or butane disposables. They don’t own lighter fluid. You do.”

Cutter: “How much did they pay you, Dennis?”

Dennis Sneden was ash-white but he held his tongue and refused to meet anyone’s eyes. Misery wafted off him like the smell of decay.

I said, “Most of the files are routine information-gathering capers. We buy information whether it’s important or not. It all goes into the hopper. Most of it, individually, isn’t important to our security. Begorenko sold us statistical data on collective farm output and miscellaneous agricultural information. Rastovic kept us posted on personnel shifts in administrative commissariats in Leningrad. I guess Dennis felt he could sell those without bruising his conscience too badly. He knew his professional future was dim. He wanted a cushion — money for his retirement. A little supplement to the pension. What was it, Dennis? A few hundred thousand in a Swiss account?”

He didn’t answer.

Cutter said, “But he’s still loyal enough to protect the vital mission. He couldn’t sell Poltov to them.”

I said, “That was his mistake. Dennis, you really should have blown Poltov. We might never have found you out.”

Sneden said quietly, “What do you take me for?”

None of us needed to answer that. After a moment Sneden crushed out his cigarette. “Do I get killed or what?”

Myerson smiled at me. “Charlie broke the case — we’ll leave the disposition to him.” He got up and wandered out of the room, having lost interest in the proceedings. The bastard. He wanted to force me to order an execution — he knows I don’t kill people. He thinks it’s because I’m squeamish — it doesn’t occur to him that it might be a matter of moral scruple.

I looked at Joe Cutter and Leonard Ross. Neither of them was at all amused. Cutter said, “He’s a class-A wonder, Myerson is.”

Ross, who is young and collegiate and manages to retain a flavor of naïveté despite several years in the service, brooded at Dennis. “Why the hell did you do it?”

Dennis sat listlessly with smoke trickling from his nostrils. He only stared bleakly at the tabletop; he neither stirred nor responded to Ross’s question.

I said, “I don’t see any need for blood. Dennis, are you ready to sign a confession?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Joe Cutter said, “You could commit suicide.”

“Not me.”

“Then you haven’t got a choice.”

“What if I deny the charges?”

I only stared him down and he understood. If he didn’t cooperate he’d be terminated — if not by me then by somebody else working under Myerson’s instructions.

“If I sign a confession what happens then?”

I said, “You go to prison. It’s the best we can do. We can’t have you getting bitter and selling the rest of your inside knowledge to the Comrades. After a few years you’ll get out on parole after the information in your head has become obsolete.”

Cutter said, “Take the deal, Dennis. It’s a better offer than you’d get anywhere else.”

Dennis took the deal.

I drove out to the airport with Joe Cutter. When we queued for our flight he said, “One of these days Myerson’s going to force you to kill somebody, or get killed.”

“He keeps trying to,” I agreed. “He’s perverse.”

“Why don’t you get out, then? God knows you’re old enough to quit.”

“And do what?” I walked away toward the plane.