Palace of Treason

15

Locked in the wood-paneled study of his house, Seb Angevine finished transferring the nine digital frames he had photographed directly off his office computer screen onto the SEARCHLIGHT stick being prepared for the second contact with the Russians. OSI had loaded twenty-three carefully edited frames of performance parameter documents for the F-22 Raptor, a stealth fighter program that had been discontinued due to cost overruns and contractor disputes. Air force CI analysts argued that the information would be tantalizing to the Russians and would keep the ball rolling. Angevine barely looked at the OSI feed material. His nine frames would be the main course and his “love letter” in the tenth digital frame at the end of the dump requested another $100,000 dollars be cached in Rock Creek Woods. Angevine had no doubt the Russians would pay.

He had picked up the first payment early on a Sunday morning at the cache site without any trouble, though he nervously had given the Russians an extra day, in case they needed more time. But he was worried for nothing. The forest was dense along Oregon Avenue NW, and there were plenty of quiet suburban streets in the Barnaby Woods neighborhood to park his car without problems. The day was fine and the air still. There were no cars moving, and the woods were empty. Though he was confident that the Russians would not jeopardize their new case by trying to surveil the cache site, Angevine kept his eyes open, not only for the suspicious early-morning loiterer, but for likely places the Russians could have set up a motion-activated camera. They wouldn’t risk it, but he would be cautious.

The sunny paved trail led conveniently to a massive, hurricane-felled oak tree whose exposed root ball created a natural pocket from which Angevine with trembling hands had extracted a bread-loaf-sized package wrapped seamlessly in blue packing tape. The loamy heft of the package was impressive. A hundred Gs. A Porsche Carrera. That Rolex GMT-Master II.

So he told the Russians to load another hundred Gs. They must be shitting themselves in the rezidentura up there on Wisconsin Avenue, wondering who the fuck TRITON was, what kind of mastermind he was, where he worked. Someone had included a plain, typed note in the money package addressed to “dear friend,” with a phone number for him in case he needed to talk. Yeah right, va t’en faire foutre, go fuck yourself.

Angevine noted that the Russians of course had been reserved and cautious in their message of greeting and references to future contact. They still did not know what they had in TRITON, but already the information about the Caracas recruitment would be incontrovertible proof that they potentially had a colossal asset. TRITON: monarch of the sea. Anonymous. Monumental.

Of course the Russians would be patient, solicitous: They were confident in the expectation that eventually they would find out who he was. No chance, thought Angevine. TRITON would emerge from the sea foam, wave his trident, and call up a howling gale, then slip beneath the waves, untouchable. And that pouffiasse, that bitch Bevacqua, could sit behind her desk and try to figure out what was happening to her Clandestine Service.

The Russians already had his first dump: the counterintelligence lead from Caracas. Now it was time to pass something even better, even more explosive: Nine images of two separate Restricted Handling cables sent by Athens Station to Langley reporting two lengthy debriefing sessions on sensitive Russian military research and development conducted by a Russian-speaking CIA case officer with a source identified only as LYRIC.

Ten p.m. Major Glenn Thorstad stood in shadow in the little ornamental public garden on Grace Street NW, off Wisconsin Avenue, overlooking the C&O Canal. He was dressed in civilian clothes, a jacket over an open-necked shirt. He wore a wide-brimmed suede hat with a leather band, not quite a cowboy hat — that would have been too conspicuous — more like an Indiana Jones number, to cover his red hair. He checked his watch for the fifth time in the last thirty minutes.

Not counting his contact with the Russian security thug in the tunnel, this would be his first face-to-face meeting with a Russian intelligence officer, something he had never contemplated in his entire career with the air force. He had been working in TransComm — Transport Command, a vital cog in the air force machine — and had risen through a series of important jobs in coordination, scheduling, and finance. He had been spotted and drafted by OSI for his demonstrable access to an immense range of classified information. He sailed through security clearance, for he had nothing to hide — shoot, he didn’t even drink. Thorstad originally had been flattered that OSI planners had approached him to suggest he play a double agent, and the briefings and practice sessions were exciting and different. But now, on the street, waiting for the SVR, he wasn’t so sure.

Thorstad had been coached on what to say, on what questions the Russians would throw at him to test him. OSI briefers told him the Russians would assume he was a double until and unless he proved to them that he was not — through unimpeachable feed material and authentic behavior.

“What’s authentic behavior for a double agent?” Thorstad had asked his training team at the same meeting. The OSI men had looked at one another — no one had actually asked them that before. A fussy voice had come from the corner of the room, from a rumpled man with mussed hair and the intonation of a Latin teacher racked with gout.

“There is no such thing, so don’t waste time thinking there is,” said Benford, who had come uninvited to this briefing of Thorstad on the eve of his first potential substantive contact with the SVR. “Act the way you feel: scared, guilty, mistrustful. You’re an air force major who’s betraying his country.”

Thorstad swallowed hard. This uncomfortable fellow again? “That’s right, you’re a traitor,” said Benford, “and the Russians will take your information and give you a bit of money, and when your access dries up, or the FBI apprehends you, Moscow will shrug their shoulders and go away until the next Major Thorstad appears at their door.”

Thorstad stared at Benford, who had just stood up and was pacing a little. “It’s all right to feel shitty, the Russians will see it and be reassured.” Benford turned to look at the OSI men, who shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

Major Thorstad replayed Benford’s words as he stood in the shadows waiting for his contact to appear. He was expecting another seven-foot brute in a leather jacket to materialize, spin him around, shove him against the brick wall of the garden, and brusquely frisk him for a wire. He didn’t know what to expect. He checked the flash card in his pocket for the eleventh time: F-22 Raptor. His second pass of intelligence to the opposition.

From over the low garden wall the sounds of a party drifted in the night air from a canal barge making its way down the waterway. Thorstad looked down at the fairy lights reflected off the water. He wished he were down there instead of here. A soft voice beside him startled him.

“Are you Glenn?” A low female voice. Thorstad turned. A woman with blond hair stood with her hands in the pockets of a light coat. She looked about fifty-five, short and somewhat heavyset. The lights from the buildings across the canal illuminated a round face with wise brown eyes and a mouth crinkled at the corners. She wore her hair up in a bun. She smiled politely at him. Librarian, personnel counselor, hospital administrator. She didn’t even look Russian. She spoke fluently in a singsongy voice, with a trace of a foreign accent, like Dutch or Norwegian. Thorstad didn’t know what to say.

“Air Force Major Thorstad?” The woman smiled taking a step closer. “Born 1979 in Farmington, Minnesota?” Thorstad swallowed and nodded. “From the name I suppose your family is Swedish?”

“Third generation,” mumbled Thorstad. He sounded idiotic.

“Talar ni svenska?” she said. “Do you speak Swedish?”

“Only a few words,” said Thorstad.

“Charmerande,” said the woman. “How charming. I remember my travels in Sweden fondly. Gillar du kroppkakor, do you like potato dumplings? So light and delectable.” Thorstad could only stare at this merry matron as she rambled on about Swedish food.

“But I suppose we should speak English, don’t you agree?”

Thorstad nodded again.

“Will you walk a little way with me?” said the woman. She actually stepped up to him and hooked her hand through his arm, like an aunt out for a Sunday stroll after dinner.

“My name is Yulia,” said the woman as they started walking down the dark, narrow street. Brick buildings on either side were closed and quiet. They came up to a smaller street — narrow and bricked-paved — that ran downhill toward the Potomac and the waterfront park. There was no one else moving and their footsteps were muffled as Yulia turned them into the dark lane — Cecil Place NW — by gently tugging his arm in the direction she wanted to go. If Thorstad had had some street training he might have noticed a shadowy figure standing still at the top of the street, watching the two. Another silhouetted figure stood beside a lamppost at the bottom of the lane watching them approach. A half block away on Water Street, in the shadow of the elevated Whitehurst Freeway, an indistinct face peered out the windshield of a parked van. The man periodically checked the mirrors. Yulia Zarubina, SVR rezident in Washington — shveja, the seamstress — had brought her boys out tonight.

“I am glad you contacted me,” she said, still holding Thorstad’s arm, but looking down at her feet. “I’d like to help you any way I can.”

Thorstad didn’t know what to say — the OSI guys had prepared him for a spittle-flecked tirade from an overgrown head-knocker.

“Tell me a little about yourself, Glenn,” Yulia said, looking up at him.

Golly, he thought, even though she’s RIS, she’s courteous. He didn’t feel the seamstress’s chain stitches begin to envelop him.

In the space of two minutes, Zarubina determined to her satisfaction that Thorstad was who she thought he was — nevinnyi, an innocent — and almost certainly not the author of the “extra material” on the first stick. She smiled again and started building her own maskirovka, her deception. She gently chided the major for the outdated intelligence in his first exchange. “The Raptor program, for goodness sake, can’t you find something a little more current, Glenn? After all, you are in such an important position, I have high hopes for us.”

Thorstad was surprised, for this was not what he had been told to expect. “What do you have in mind?” he asked, remembering at the last minute that his OSI support team had told him to elicit information and requirements from the Russians. Yeah, elicit. Zarubina looked out at the nighttime Potomac, at the fairy lights of Rosslyn, and at the dark trees of Roosevelt Island.

“These things are so technical,” said Yulia, squeezing his arm as they walked slowly along the waterfront. Her eyes caught his and she smiled, a grandmother about to repeat a recipe for cookies. “But it would be lovely if you could bring me any information — current diagnostics, flight test data, design analyses — regarding the problem of wing buffeting in the F-35. That really would be lovely.” She looked up at Thorstad and her eyes crinkled at the corners.

“The 35?” said Thorstad. It sounded like she knew a lot.

“Yes, I believe you call it the Lightning II. I hope you can find something. I was so excited when you contacted me.” Zarubina seldom used the words “Center,” “Moscow,” or “Russia,” and always kept it personal. There would be time for the relationship to be utverdivshiysya, institutionalized, by the Center, when it was too late to stop.

The Americans, thankfully, were predictable. She was relying on this American naïf to go back to his handlers — she correctly assumed this was an OSI initiative — and report that the Russians were interested, really interested, and that the DA op was on its way. Zarubina’s personal involvement testified to that, and she hoped the air force CI officers would concur. She must continue meeting with this Thorstad creature, feign interest and patience, continue asking for information the air force would never agree to pass. Whoever this TRITON was, he needed the channel kept open and active.

There might be some opportunities for aktivnye meropriyatiya, active measures, disinformation, in the intelligence requirements levied on Thorstad, thought Zarubina. She had once asked a French military attaché — another double agent — for operational manuals on the Mirage 2000N, volumes one through twelve and fifteen through twenty-two. When the goggling Frenchman asked her why not volumes thirteen and fourteen (the books describing the three kiloton ASMP — the French acronym for “medium-range air-to-surface” — nuclear missile carried by the 2000N). Zarubina had patted her hair and ignored the question — as if disinterested in something she already possessed — triggering a two-year French mole hunt in the Ministry of Defense, and a constitutional crisis in the Élysée regarding the continued viability of France’s nuclear deterrence policy. That active measure had been inspired.

Her exceptional mind was running on this third track even while she spoke to Thorstad in soothing tones. With one ear she listened to her countersurveillance team working around her on the earpiece on the side she kept away from Thorstad. She had Thorstad’s thumb drive in her pocket and she was anxious to see if the mystery source TRITON had again appended anything. Zarubina had an intuition that this was the beginning of a major case.

At the end of their walk, she watched Thorstad in his ridiculous, wide-brimmed shlyapa trudge up Thirty-First Street NW toward the lights of M Street. Zarubina hoped this TRITON was intelligent. It didn’t reassure her that he had chosen a code name for himself — a worrying possible indicator of the ego of an epic megalomaniac. Besides monarch of the sea, “triton” in Russian meant “newt.” Not exactly the most heroic cryptonym for an agent, thought Zarubina, but perhaps naming oneself after a squirmy amphibian will prove to be apt.

“She was courteous and attentive,” said Thorstad. He was sitting at a table in a Pentagon conference room surrounded by OSI agents and two officers from A-2 counterintelligence. Benford sat quietly at the end of the table, looking up at the ceiling as if he were thinking about what to have for dinner.

“She asked me about myself. I told her I needed the money, like we rehearsed. I admitted I liked to gamble,” said Thorstad.

“And how did she respond?” asked Benford. The OSI agents weren’t listening, they were all busy taking notes — second contact with RIS, contact with the Washington chief of SVR, specific requirements on the F-35 — their DA op named SEARCHLIGHT was catching fire. They would draft another lead item in the next monthly report — no, a separate memo to the secretary of the air force, maybe even SecDef. They looked over at Benford. This dipstick from Langley said it would be a “no-show.” Some expert.

“She said we all occasionally have difficulties,” said Thorstad. “She was, like, really understanding. No hardline stuff, nothing.”

Of course, thought Benford, you just had a pleasant evening stroll with an old lady, a shveja, a seamstress. But Benford’s three decades of low-crawling through the wilderness of mirrors told him something did not add up. In matters of intelligence collection, the Russians were — had always been — greedy, covetous, rapacious, suspicious, impatient, avaricious, extorting, brutal. But never stupid. Benford knew the feeling, felt the familiar bolus in his throat, when contemplating some as-yet-unknown Russian action. In due course the plot would become apparent, like a sheep’s head floating up from the bottom of the stew pot, staring and grinning. But by then it would be too late.

Fry salt pork and onions until golden brown. Into cold mashed potatoes mix egg, black pepper, nutmeg, and flour and work into a dough. Cut and roll dough into balls, make a cavity in each, and fill with the pork/onion mixture. Crimp dumplings closed and boil in beef broth until cooked through. Serve with sour cream.