Palace of Treason

14

It was a measure of Seb Angevine’s pathology that his sudden bombshell decision to sell secrets to the Russians did not conflict with notions of loyalty to or betraying his country. He was apoplectic at being passed over — this did not happen to him. He idly tried rationalizing that passing secrets (and thus leveling the intelligence playing field) would create calm in the Kremlin, reassure Putin, and make Russian foreign policy less prone to global adventurism. Yeah maybe, thought Angevine, je m’en tamponne, I don’t give a shit.

He was sliding down the slope toward espionage for two of the classic human motivations: money and ego. He wanted money, lots of it, and based on various counterintelligence summaries he had read, the Russians paid a lot better than they used to. And his damaged and galloping ego thirsted to repay the director; all the peacock deputies; that morue, that codfish, Bevacqua; and the entire CIA for ruining his life. The bitter contempt for his colleagues salved any guilt that might have intruded — none did — and focused him on what he really wanted.

The element that preoccupied Seb was how to pass classified information to the Russians and not be caught. During his training, the former NCIS polygrapher had learned a lot about past US espionage cases — Pollard, Ames, Hanssen, Pelton, Walker — and he knew how each of them had eventually been exposed: sloppy tradecraft, a pissed-off ex-wife, or a stupid accomplice, yes. But hands down, if you were an American passing secrets to the Russkies, you were most likely to be blown out of the water by an SVR officer recruited and run inside by CIA, a penetration agent who would report to Langley that the Center was running an American case — perhaps a name would be provided, perhaps not — and that’s all the FBI needed to start an investigation.

Hanssen, for one, had gotten cute. From the first contact he had tried to stay anonymous to the Russians: He refused face-to-face meetings, identified himself only as “Ramon.” But the Russians also were cute and tape-recorded one of Ramon’s calls to his handler. The actual audio tape was stolen from the file in Moscow Center by a CIA penetration of the SVR and passed back to Langley. Hanssen’s thunderstruck Bureau colleagues had recognized his voice — he was in supermax ADX in Florence, Colorado, for life.

Therefore, the critical task was to find a secure conduit to the Russians that could not be tracked back to him. Seb spent the weekend thinking about the problem, exhausted and edgy, but nothing came to him. For dinner he munched absently on the lumpia — Philippine spring rolls — his housekeeper, Arcadia, had left in the fridge. Seb brooded alone. Then he remembered the OSI double agent briefing on his calendar.

The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, known as AFOSI or simply OSI, was, like NCIS, more a law-enforcement agency dedicated to policing air force miscreants. A small counterintelligence section pursued leads, but if one of their cases really heated up, the “FEEBs” in the Hoover Building would take over, or the CIA would swoop in for foreign-based cases. All that was left to try was controlled cases.

Seb Angevine knew that double agent ops were a creaky anachronism of the Cold War. Generating (and approving) authentic feed material for passage to the opposition was an unending, crushing chore. Moreover, intelligence agencies around the world were all finely attuned to the threat of provocation from a dispatched volunteer: They all had been burned. Thus the opposition’s requirements for bona fide intelligence were wickedly demanding — blockbuster intelligence, the kind that really could be considered a loss of national security information, was the standard test for any agent. If intelligence production was meager, or inconsequential, or uncorroborated, a volunteer would not be vetted.

Angevine, as ADD/Mil, could ask for and receive detailed, classified briefings on any double agent operation, and he called his contacts at the Pentagon to be more fully read into the new OSI project. Seb listened carefully to the description of SEARCHLIGHT, the code name for the operation. An air force major named Glenn Thorstad had been drafted as the double agent — a red-haired, green-eyed Lutheran from Minnesota, a real squarehead, thought Angevine. He was surprised to hear that Major Thorstad had already made contact with the Russian Embassy in Washington by slipping an envelope under the windshield wiper of a Russian diplomat’s car at the National Arboretum on New York Avenue.

As Seb walked into the OSI briefing room in the Pentagon he saw Simon Benford sitting in a chair against the wall. Angevine was acquainted with Benford slightly — their professional worlds did not often intersect. He knew Benford was chief of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Division, and the enfant terrible of the Intelligence Community. Apart from that, Angevine was only faintly aware that Benford’s universe was populated with moles and spies, a murky world of indications, clues, and intelligence leaks. Angevine did not like him — during the past year of high-level meetings on the seventh floor he could feel Benford’s eyes on him, could hear the contempt in his voice when he spoke. But Benford was that way to everybody.

Angevine knew that veteran operations officers in the service (like Benford) discounted him. They all knew that Angevine had not earned his associate deputy position in CIA by running operations in the foreign field. It was sweet irony that Angevine outranked them all — not that he could pull rank on any of them. In the strangely egalitarian clandestine service, and despite its patrician roots, even junior officers addressed seniors by their first names.

What was Benford doing at this relatively unimportant OSI meeting? He sat down next to him, the only two CIA officers in the room otherwise filled by blue uniforms and ribbons.

“Simon,” said Angevine, staring straight ahead.

“Sebastian,” said Benford, focused on the far wall.

“What are you doing here?” said Angevine. “A bit below your scope.”

“I would have thought the same for you,” said Benford. Neither had looked at the other once.

“I try to immerse myself in a variety of operations,” said Angevine archly.

“Of course you do,” said Benford, “being the ADD/Mil and all.” Angevine ignored the sarcasm.

“And you?”

Benford turned to look at Angevine. “You know what I think of double agent operations,” he said. “Time intensive, dilatory, inconclusive. No serious service spends much capital on them anymore.” Angevine turned and looked at Benford. “But you know all that, don’t you, Sebastian?”

“Then why are you here, Simon?” asked Angevine.

“God Bless OSI,” said Benford. “They are squeaky and enthusiastic and they try. And this operation of theirs — SEARCHLIGHT, I think they call it — seems to have drawn out the Bolshies. Quite remarkable.”

“Bolshies?” said Angevine.

“Russians to you. The Washington rezidentura responded to the note that squeaky young air force major left on one of their cars. Directed him to a site in Maryland. Quite extraordinary, they normally turn volunteers away. The rezident may be under pressure from the Center to become more productive.”

“Interesting,” said Angevine. “Who is the head boy these days?” He was thinking ahead: Getting the rezident’s name could be useful in the future.

“It’s the head girl, actually,” said Benford.

Most interesting, thought Angevine. “Who is she?” he said.

“Yulia Zarubina,” said Benford, tilting his head. “Name mean anything to you?”

A jolt of guilt ran up Angevine’s spine. “No. Why, should it?”

“Yulia’s grandmother was Elizaveta Zarubina, posted to Washington in 1940. While Hoover’s FBI was chasing her husband around town, she recruited half the U.S. atom spies in Moscow’s stable. Oppenheimer, Gold, Hall, Greenglass. She was a legend, personally commended by Stalin.”

“Never heard of her,” said Angevine.

“Ancient history,” said Benford. “Yulia kept the family name, presumably to continue the pedigree.”

“So you’re here to take a closer look at her,” said Angevine.

“Indeed. She’s a rarity in the SVR. Highest-ranking woman in their service — she’s around fifty-five — only a few of them around.

“Coming up she did the usual rounds in the Foreign Language Institute and the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” said Benford. “Got her grandmother’s genes: ten languages, cultured and savvy. Overseas tours in Paris, Tokyo, and Stockholm as rezident. Putin sent her to Washington as rezident, part charm offensive. But there’s another side to our Zarubina. The reason I’m interested in this OSI stage show.”

“Do tell,” said Angevine, feigning disinterest, looking around the room.

“Yulia Zarubina is a recruiter. Got a talent for it. Source once reported that they call her shveja, the seamstress, like she sews up her targets.” Useful to know, thought Angevine. Benford just did my homework for me.

“If she’s coming out to play with our major over there,” said Benford, “we’d like to take a closer look at her.”

“It’s all a bit melodramatic, don’t you think, Simon?” said Angevine.

Benford tilted his head again. “It depends on your definition of drama, Sebastian,” he said.

Angevine listened to half the OSI briefing on SEARCHLIGHT and slipped out the door, earning a heavy-lidded stare from Benford. He had heard enough. Every month OSI handlers, a production review board, and the deputy director of the A-2 Staff (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) would compile and review the proposed digital package assembled by OSI for passage to the Russians.

Angevine thought the operation idiotic and transparent. But the notion of photographing documents with a digital camera was interesting — perhaps something he could manipulate. He would append real secrets to the tail end of the OSI dross. He imagined the jaw-dropped Russians coming to the end of Thorstad’s chicken feed to find additional images from another source, explosive images, dynamite secrets. No personal meetings, no exposure — he would be flying under the radar, using an approved channel. And the new source — Seb would have to come up with his own code name, that would be amusing — would be unknown and untraceable to him in Langley: If any suspicions emerged, Benford the mole-hunter would have to comb through the thousands of USAF personnel files of those employees with access to classified information before looking elsewhere.

Two refinements remained: He needed access to the OSI flash card, and he had to receive his money. He thought furiously. He would insist that CIA’s Military Affairs staff review the card before passage as a counterintelligence check — he would do it himself. As for the money: no alias bank accounts, domestic or offshore. Counterintelligence investigators could uncover those in an afternoon. No, the money would have to be passed via old-fashioned dead drops. But in this he was courting danger: The FBI followed Russian intel officers around Washington waiting specifically for such activity — loading and clearing drops. SVR officers in Washington were too hot. Except perhaps the urbane and effective Yulia Zarubina, Putin’s poster girl for improved bilateral relations. It could work.

The courier from the Pentagon arrived with the zippered and locked portfolio, peeled off a copy of the receipt signed by Angevine’s secretary, and left. He would return to collect the flash card for SEARCHLIGHT the next morning, after the mandated final review by CIA, specifically by the associate deputy director for Military Affairs. When the CIA signed off on the contents, the card would be delivered directly to Major Thorstad, who would prepare to meet the Russians that night.

Angevine plugged the card into a stand-alone laptop on the credenza behind his desk and quickly scrolled through the air force feed material that Thorstad would pass the next evening. Ordure, garbage. Ridiculous. The night before, in his locked office, he had used a lightweight Nikon to photograph a three-page classified cable off the screen of his Agency desktop — no hard copy, no print job record, an anonymous photo and untraceable. Angevine chose an ops cable reporting the recent recruitment of a junior Russian military attaché in Venezuela. The Caracas Station cable was detailed, named names, listed the information the attaché was providing. The beauty of it was that Angevine had no connection to Latin America Division, or to the operation — he simply had access to worldwide cable traffic.

Angevine knew that for the Russians there was no bona fides like telling them about an espionage case that involved one of their own. They relished catching their own traitors. Ames, by 1994, had been paid nearly $5 million for the names of twelve Soviets on the CIA payroll, an immense payout by a normally stingy Moscow. Along with this info, Angevine had also written and photographed a single-page letter of introduction, the fourth image in his camera. He transferred the four images from his camera onto the OSI flash card and reviewed the results. The air force manuals, then three pages of a CIA ops cable, then his love letter. Angevine’s images looked different — distinct metadata and dox files — but that was fine, it highlighted the mystery. The letter was spare, muscular, all business. The Russians would shit when they read it:

Nine forty-five p.m. Golly, thought Major Thorstad, this first meeting with the Russians was turning out to be a disaster. He worried that he had misunderstood the directions he had received: At nine in the evening, walk along the one-mile stretch of the unlighted Capital Crescent Trail in Bethesda, Maryland, between Massachusetts Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard. The former Baltimore and Ohio rail bed had been converted to an asphalt-paved hiking and biking trail, but at nine there were no joggers and the dense woods on either side of the pathway were pitch-black. Thorstad had completed two circuits on the trail — almost by feel, it was so dark — and was nearing the yawning maw of the turn-of-the-century, brick-lined Dalecarlia Tunnel that passed under the nearby reservoir.

A man oozed out of the shadows at the mouth of the tunnel, his face and hands faintly discernible in the half moonlight. Thorstad slowly walked up to him.

“Tor-stud?” said the face, mangling his name. The major nodded. “Come close,” said the man, with what Thorstad assumed was a Russian accent.

The major took a step forward. “I didn’t know if I was in the right place. It’s nearly an hour beyond what you—”

“Face wall,” said the man, who lifted Thorstad’s arms so his hands slapped against the rough brick. The interior of the tunnel was cold, ground water dribbled from the arched brick roof, making a toneless pock-pock echo. The man expertly frisked Thorstad, taking his time with his crotch, back, and front. He stooped and passed a metal detector wand around Thorstad’s shoes and outer jacket. The man was a chunky, hard-faced mouth-breather. He reeked of alcohol — Thorstad supposed it was vodka — but he appeared steady on his feet. He grunted as he finished frisking Thorstad, who turned to look at him. The Russian took a penlight out of his pocket and flashed it twice, in both directions down the tunnel. No signal or response, but Thorstad realized in a rush that they were not alone, that Russian wolves had been watching him, the trail, and the forest since he arrived. He shivered inwardly at the thought of armed men in the gentrified woods of upscale Bethesda.

“Why have you contacted us?” said the man heavily.

Thorstad was eager to please, and OSI had coached him to be communicative, cooperative. “As I wrote in my note to you, I need financial help,” he said. “I need money.”

“Why not go to bank if you need money?” said the man. “Why come to us?”

“I have information of interest to you,” Thorstad said lamely.

“Show me,” said the man. Thorstad took the flash card out of his pocket and held it out in his palm, like he was feeding a horse a sugar cube. The man took the flash card, turned it in his fingers as if he did not know what it was, then reached into his coat and stuffed it into a shirt pocket. Body odor mixed with the stench of vodka wafted up when he moved.

The man reached into another pocket and handed Thorstad a card with directions to and a line map of the next meeting site. “For next time,” said the Russian, turning away to melt into the black, walking south through the tunnel. Thorstad watched him go. The Russian — a clunky SVR security man from the rezidentura — knew only that, if based on the American’s information, the Center assessed that the volunteer was dvurushnichestvo, double-dealing, no one would be at the prescribed rendezvous. And the card, made of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, would absorb ambient humidity and slowly decompose into a pulpy glob in a month’s time.

Just plain rude, thought Thorstad, and he put the card into his pocket and walked on the path north, out of the woods, toward the lights of Massachusetts Avenue. He looked studiously ahead, intent on not looking for the night glimmer of Slavic eyes in the black trees on either side of him.

“And then what happened?” asked Benford. Redheaded Major Thorstad took a drink of water from a carafe in the middle of the conference room. Three OSI officers were taking copious notes, to Benford’s obvious annoyance. The jubilant OSI guys didn’t care: Contact with RIS — Russian Intelligence Service. In suburban Washington. The first encounter in three years. Their DA operation. It would be the shit-hot lead in the monthly activity report for the air force brass. Mr. Chips over there from the CIA could kiss their asses.

“Well, I can tell you, the guy was quite rude,” said Thorstad. Benford shifted in his seat and only at the last minute remembered this ginger snap was not a subordinate and therefore, technically, he could not bellow at him.

“He was forty-five minutes late in appearing,” said Thorstad. “I walked the hiking trail two complete times.” He held up two fingers to clarify for Benford. The OSI guys were taking down every word.

“They probably had people in the woods with night vision goggles, looking at your approach, watching for coverage,” said Benford.

Thorstad snapped his fingers. “You’re absolutely correct, Mr. Benford. The man shone a flashlight in both directions down the tunnel. It was a signal of some sort.” Benford suppressed a moan.

“I am gratified you agree,” Benford said, his tone lost on Thorstad, who was trying to remember more details. Benford wondered if the major even considered that a different signal from that flashlight might have ended with him crumpled on the wet bricks of the tunnel.

“He took the flash card,” said Thorstad, “and gave me this card with the next meeting site on it. In two weeks, in Georgetown.”

Benford took the card, read it while feeling the satiny finish, and slid it to the OSI men at the end of the table.

“Water-soluble paper. Make sure you copy the instructions verbatim and put this in a glassine envelope. It’ll decompose in three weeks if you don’t keep it out of the atmosphere.” The OSI officers looked at one another, unsure about “verbatim” and “glassine.” Benford turned to Thorstad.

“Well, I suppose it went as well as we could expect,” Benford said. “The unpleasant fellow—”

“I forgot to say that he reeked — absolutely reeked — of alcohol, apart from the rudeness,” said Thorstad, interrupting.

“Yes, well, he probably has troubles of his own at home,” said Benford. Thorstad looked a little guilty at being so unfair: He had not considered that the man might be having problems. Benford looked with clinical interest at the changing expressions on Thorstad’s face. Where did OSI find this man-child major?

“He almost certainly was a low-level security officer from the embassy, perhaps from the rezidentura,” said Benford. “The Center would not risk sending one of their active operations officers under cover to this meeting.”

Thorstad nodded. Benford turned to address the OSI men. “I would urge restraint in writing up this contact and predicting further progress,” he said. “The likelihood of another meeting is exceedingly slim, given that the feed material is dated. The Russians are looking for exceptional intelligence. If they don’t get it, they will conclude that the major is a dispatched volunteer and will simply turn the operation off.”

The OSI men looked back glumly.

“I anticipate you will be left waiting at the next rendezvous,” said Benford to Thorstad. “You should not be surprised at a no show.”

Benford rose and left the room. One of the OSI men flipped him the bird behind his back. Thorstad glared at him.

“At ease, sergeant. That’s not the way we do things in the air force,” Thorstad said.

Dice cabbage, carrots, onion, scallion, and garlic and sauté in oil with soy sauce. Brown ground pork and combine with the vegetables. Wrap filling tightly in large wonton or lumpia wrappers. Fry in vegetable oil until crispy and golden brown.