Launch Code

THIRTY-FIVE

May 1996, Cobham, England

Saturday mornings were crazy in the Guth household. Actually, I suspect that every morning was crazy, but I was at work Monday to Friday and on Sunday we shared kid duty.

Saturday, it was just me. Donna stayed in bed, or sometimes went outside for a walk. Alone.

There were four kids by that stage. Maya was nine months old and crawling, Megan two and terrible. Brooke was five and Alice was six and my loyal assistant. Maya was angelic, of course, and Alice did a great job entertaining her. Megan and Brooke were more work.

We had been in England a couple of years. I had been transferred by my employer, a US defence communications company based in Virginia, to their European headquarters which was near Reading. We had rented a small house in Cobham, because it was close to the American school. At that stage, only Alice was attending the elementary school, but the idea was everyone would go there in time.

Donna had given up her legal career, at least temporarily, after Megan was born. Four kids under seven is a lot to manage.

The doorbell rang. It was two clean-cut American men – one white, one black – dressed in white shirts, ties and suits. On a Saturday morning. I wasn’t surprised when they showed me FBI ID.

I was surprised when they said they wanted to speak with Donna and me together.

That took a few minutes to sort out, but Donna got dressed and came downstairs, and the four girls were successfully installed in front of the Saturday morning cartoons in the living room.

‘You’re a bit far from home, aren’t you?’ I asked. I had had some dealings with American intelligence since moving to England, but that had been the CIA, not the FBI. The FBI classically dealt with domestic US crimes.

Like spying.

‘We would like to ask both of you about a woman named Patricia Greenwald,’ the black taller one began. He had introduced himself as Agent Watkins. The other one was Agent Macdonald.

Yes. Like spying.

Donna frowned. I knew she wouldn’t like that subject. ‘Aren’t you done with all that? The Cold War is over, peace has broken out. Or haven’t you heard?’

‘Thankfully that’s true. But the end of the Cold War has brought some interesting new facts to light. KGB and Stasi files in Moscow and East Berlin.’

‘Hey. You spent the whole of the eighties claiming that the Russians were funding the peace movement and it was all bullshit. You knew it was all bullshit, and now we know. So why don’t you give up? It’s yesterday’s news.’

Agent Watkins smiled politely. ‘You are correct we got that wrong. The KGB and the GRU were trying to fund the peace movement, but the peace activists managed to avoid taking their money. Mostly.’

‘Mostly? Are you saying that Pat Greenwald took Russian money?’

‘We think that Pat Greenwald may have been an agent for the KGB.’

‘That’s absurd!’ said Donna.

‘It may be. But that’s what we are investigating. And that’s why we need to speak with you. Now, how did you know Pat Greenwald?’

Donna glanced at me in frustration.

‘Tell them, Donna,’ I said. ‘If she was a spy, we need to help them. And if she wasn’t, then maybe we can help them see that.’

Donna scowled. ‘OK. Pat was an assistant professor at Hunter College. She was also one of the foremost peace activists in New York. She was an organizer of that big Freeze anti-nuclear rally in Central Park in 1982 where a million people showed up. And she was a member of WAND – that’s Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament. I met her at the peace camp outside the Seneca nuclear weapons depot in upstate New York, and I stayed in touch with her when I got back to the city.’

‘Did she show any signs of communist sympathies? Or sympathies toward the Soviet Union?’

‘No!’ said Donna. ‘You guys should get this by now. We were opposed to nuclear weapons whoever had them. We were not opposed to the United States. And we certainly didn’t like Brezhnev – or Andropov I think it was then. I forget, they all died so quickly.’

‘What about the Gorky Trust Group?’ said Agent Watkins. ‘Did she ever mention that?’

‘Yes, she did,’ said Donna. ‘I remember her speaking about them. But they weren’t communists. The whole point about them was they were dissidents. They were a bunch of scientists mostly from the city of Gorky. I think it was a closed city then, no westerners could go there. The point is that they were against nuclear weapons just like we were.’

‘Did you ever meet them?’

‘Pat dealt with them mostly. But a physicist came to speak to us all once. What was her name? Boyarova?’

‘That’s correct. Irena Boyarova,’ Watkins said.

‘OK. Yeah, she spoke to us. She was inspiring, actually.’

‘She worked for the KGB,’ the other, shorter agent said. Agent Macdonald.

Donna just snorted.

‘We suspected it at the time,’ said Macdonald. ‘The KGB archive backs that up.’

‘But you just heard that Donna only met her once, and that was as part of a crowd,’ I protested.

Agent Watkins ignored my comment. ‘That wasn’t all the files said about Dr Greenwald. Mr Guth: did you ever meet Greenwald?’

‘Me? No.’

‘Or Irena Boyarova?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I see.’ Watkins paused. ‘Did you ever tell your wife about what happened aboard the USS Alexander Hamilton in November 1983?’

I hate lying. I might lie for my country; I had no desire to lie to my country. But I had no choice. I had known when I had decided to tell Donna everything that the day might come when a FBI agent might sit me down and ask me the kind of questions he was asking me now.

And I had decided then that if that happened, I would lie.

‘No, I didn’t. I mean, I told her that Lieutenant Naylor died in an accident. She knew Craig; she went to college with his sister. But I didn’t tell her anything else.’

The agent turned to Donna. ‘Mrs Guth. Did your husband tell you what happened on the submarine on that patrol?’

‘Er. I thought he had. He said Craig fell down a ladder and hit his head, but he didn’t die for several days. Was there something else?’

Donna glanced at me, with a look of puzzlement. Her face hardened. ‘Was there a radiation leak?’

I had never realized that my wife was such a good liar.

‘Not that kind of leak,’ said Watkins. ‘Everything that happened on board the USS Alexander Hamilton on that patrol is in the KGB’s files. And it came via Irena Boyarova.’

‘So where did she get it?’ I asked.

‘From an officer on the submarine. An officer who was there.’

‘And it’s not just the order to launch nuclear missiles,’ said Agent MacDonald. ‘There was other information too. About the organization of the submarine fleet in the North Atlantic. About targets. And technical details about the Poseidon missiles themselves.’

‘Do the files say which officer?’

‘No,’ Watkins replied. ‘But given Mrs Guth was then your girlfriend, and she knew Greenwald at the time, and Greenwald knew Boyarova, it seems natural for us to consider that it might be you.’

Donna looked at me in something close to panic.

I paused to think. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I see that. Let me start by saying it wasn’t me. I never divulged what happened to anyone, let alone a Russian.’

‘OK,’ said Watkins. ‘If you aren’t responsible, do you know who is?’

I had no clue. No clue at all. I could see how I was the most likely spy. So likely, I was surprised they hadn’t already arrested me and bundled me off to some cell in the FBI building in Washington.

I immediately wondered whether I should start by coming clean about what I had told Donna. That she knew about the near-launch. But would that get her into trouble?

For a second I thought that maybe she had given the information to the KGB after all, or maybe just to Pat Greenwald in an innocent discussion about nuclear accidents. That was the most likely explanation.

But even that would be enough to place us both in deep trouble.

I exchanged glances with Donna. She was a smart woman. And by that stage we had been married for ten years. We knew each other very well. She knew what I was thinking.

And I knew there was something she wasn’t telling me.

That scared me.

She leaned back in the armchair. The three of us, me and the two FBI agents, watched her.

She spoke. ‘I told someone about Pat. About her contact with the Gorky Group. One of Bill’s fellow officers.’ She sighed. ‘Through Bill, he knew my politics. He wanted me to put him in touch with a peace activist who had contacts with Russia. I thought he just wanted to join the cause. It never occurred to me he would want to give away secrets.’

‘Who?’ Agent Watkins asked.

‘Commander Driscoll.’