The Bearpit

15

Having buried deep within itself a spy operating for another side is the gut-twisting nightmare of every intelligence organization, so the response of the Central Intelligence Agency to the Paris information was immediate. The empanelled group had no official designation but the codename at the CIA’s Langley headquarters was appropriately Crisis and it was in a crisis atmosphere that it met. Harry Myers, whom everyone called Hank, was its head because he was the Agency’s security chief and preventing such eventualities was his job. Edward Norris, deputy director of the CIA’s Soviet division, was the obvious second member, and the third was Walter Crookshank, the Agency’s chief legal counsel: from the beginning the inquiry had to be conducted with a view to eventual criminal prosecution.

‘It’s a bugger,’ declared Myers, a bearded, beer-bellied man who regarded the information as something like a personal insult: if it were true, then he’d screwed up on the job. He didn’t like screwing up on anything.

‘It’s not substantiated yet,’ said Crookshank with a lawyer’s caution.

‘It’s got a taste to it,’ said Myers obtusely. To Norris he said: ‘What about Shelenkov?’

‘Provably KGB,’ said the Soviet expert. ‘Identified first in 1981, in Ottawa. Transferred in 83 to London, where MI5 came within a whisker of making an arrest. He was running a technician from an early warning installation in Yorkshire: just before MI5 swept them up the technician committed suicide, and without an admission from him the legal ruling was there was insufficient evidence. Moved here to Washington in July 1985…’

‘… FBI put him on a Watch List?’ interrupted Myers at once.

‘We made the request that they should do so,’ said Norris. He was a swarthy, large-bodied man who on Sundays acted as a lay preacher at his Alexandria church and viewed his role in the CIA in religious terms: someone who knew the truth keeping America clean and free of the atheist non-believers.

‘But did they do it?’ demanded Crookshank, always needing the legal precision.

‘I’ve asked Pennsylvania Avenue for the complete file records but they haven’t come back yet,’ replied Norris. ‘There was certainly some surveillance: while he was here I got three reports about him, to update our own files. Appeared to be one of the up-front guys. Never missed an embassy party, drank a lot although he seemed to be able to hold it: actually had the balls to mingle with some pinko Democrats up on Capitol Hill.’

‘And Kapalet?’

‘One of the best guys we’ve had for years,’ said Norris. ‘Made his own approach fifteen months ago at an embassy reception. We held him at pole’s length for a long time, of course: just in case he was a plant…’

‘… And?’ broke in Myers again.

‘Not one bum steer,’ said Norris. ‘He’s one of the best we’ve had in a very long time.’

‘No reason to doubt him this time, then?’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Norris.

‘Fuck it!’ said Myers vehemently.

‘At the moment all we seem to have is a drunken boast,’ Crookshank attempted to qualify. ‘Just a few words that mean nothing.’

‘That’s what intelligence is, a few words to go with another few words until you get the whole picture,’ came back Myers, venting his irritation upon the lawyer. He snatched up the message that had been telexed from Paris and quoted: ‘ “We’ve got the CIA by the balls”. That sure as hell isn’t just a few words meaning nothing to me. To me that means exactly what it says: that our balls are in a vice.’

Your balls, not mine, thought Crookshank. He said: ‘Can’t we carry out some sort of investigation here at Langley?’

‘Deep vetting, of five thousand people! Strap every one into a polygraph and sweat them, you mean?’ demanded Myers. ‘You any idea how long that would take? We’d still be doing it when they were swearing in Gorbachov on the White House lawn!’

‘What then?’ said Crookshank. He thought the security chief’s tough-guy repartee was a load of crap; late-night movie stuff.

‘We need leads,’ insisted Myers. ‘We start trying to blanket the entire agency and all we’re going to do is maybe warn the son-of-a-bitch and drive him deeper into the woodwork…’ To Norris he said: ‘You briefed Drew, in Paris?’

‘Personally, by secure radio patch,’ assured the other man. ‘Told him to promise Kapalet whatever he wants: top brick off the chimney. Anything.’

‘What did Drew say?’

‘That he’d already done that anyway.’

‘Isn’t there anything we can do here?’ persisted Crookshank.

‘I’m running the character assessment and analysis tests for the last five years through the computer,’ disclosed Myers.

‘That might throw up something,’ offered the lawyer.

‘An inconsistency – a problem – should have been thrown up the first time, when they were initially taken and reviewed,’ said Myers, refusing to give himself any false hope. ‘If the bastard got under the wire that time then the odds are that he will do so again.’

‘It’s not going to be easy, is it?’ said Crookshank, who had enjoyed the sixties hippie movement and still wore his hair long: at weekends he secured it with a coloured bandana and toked pot. In the last year he’d developed a great source, pure sinsimella from California.

Myers looked at the lawyer sourly and made as if to reply. Instead he said: ‘What we need is another informant. Some independent confirmation: different – maybe better – leads…’ To Norris he said: ‘When do we expect to hear from Paris again?’

‘Nothing’s regular,’ said Norris. ‘When Kapalet’s got something he arranges the contact.’

‘So it could be weeks?’ pressed the security head.

‘Months,’ said Norris unhelpfully.

‘Fuck it!’ said Myers again. ‘Doesn’t that frighten the hell out of you, knowing that somewhere in this complex there is a Commie bastard who could go on operating for months without us being able to do a goddamn thing about it?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Norris, ‘it frightens the hell out of me.’

Definitely late-night movie dialogue, thought Crook-shank. More to unsettle Myers than for any other reason he said: ‘Imagine, operating even now!’

Which was, ironically, exactly what was happening. John Willick made his way unseeing among the mechanical exhibits in the Smithsonian, uninterested in the revolving wheels and apart-and-together cogs and strange, misshapen forerunner machines that sighed and wheezed, showing their age. Just when he thought he was getting some luck! Just when he thought everything was going to turn out all right – the same money from Oleg as he got from the other guy – everything had to turn sour in his mouth! Fuck Eleanor: fuck Eleanor and her smart-ass lawyer hitting him with a court warning about the alimony arrears, a pay-within-a-week ultimatum. Couldn’t they give a guy a break? All he’d needed was a month: just one month, to get another $1,000 payment from Oleg to cover that damned call-in on the gold futures for which he’d pledged himself (who could have calculated the fucking South Africans dumping a huge metal sale when they’d hoarded for months?) and he’d be OK. But no. Eleanor couldn’t wait. Never had been able to wait. Pay up or else. Jesus, why had he married the bitch?

‘Strange to think that these primitive machines were considered revolutionary just fifty years ago, isn’t it?’

Willick started slightly, not having detected the Russian’s approach. ‘Very strange,’ he agreed. Who the hell wanted to talk about cogs and wheels?

‘And they made fortunes for their inventors.’

Willick was only interested in his own fortunes. He said: ‘I’ve got something pretty good.’

‘What?’

Instead of answering, Willick said: ‘I’ve been thinking.’ There was a pain in his stomach, on the left, where the ulcer had been, but he didn’t think the ulcer had anything to do with it.

‘What about?’

‘Value,’ said Willick. ‘My value to you.’

‘I’ve already assured you of that.’

‘I want more than assurance.’

‘What?’

‘A reassessment. I don’t think I’m being properly rewarded.’

‘A thousand dollars a month is a lot of money, John.’

‘Not enough,’ insisted the American, tight-mouthed.

‘How much?’

‘Two.’ The pain in his gut was worsening and he could feel the sweat damp on his forehead.

The Russian gave a sharp intake of breath and started to move, taking Willick with him. ‘There would have to be higher approval for that,’ he said. ‘Much higher approval.’

‘Get it,’ insisted Willick.

The Russian frowned, very slightly, at the rudeness. ‘You said you had something pretty good.’

‘Wouldn’t the confirmed identities of every CIA agent operating out of the Moscow embassy be pretty good?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Oleg at once. ‘That would be very good indeed.’

‘Not just names,’ expanded Willick, promoting what he had to sell. ‘Full biographies. Dependants. Everything.’

‘Moscow will be very pleased,’ said the Russian.

‘We haven’t agreed the price,’ refused Willick.

The Russian stopped near a moving display of an early steam engine, not immediately replying. Then he said: ‘I see. No financial increase, no more information?’

‘In a nutshell,’ concurred Willick. He was troubled now not just by the nagging pain but by the need for a lavatory.

‘So it’s an ultimatum?’

Like I got from fucking Eleanor and her fucking lawyer, thought Willick. He said: ‘The sort of information I can provide now is worth it.’

‘Sometimes Moscow resents being pressured like this: being threatened with an ultimatum,’ said the Russian mildly.

Dear God, don’t let them turn me down, thought Willick, who had no religious beliefs. He said: ‘I didn’t call it an ultimatum. You did.’

‘But if we don’t increase the payment to two thousand, you won’t help us any more, isn’t that what you’re saying?’ reiterated Oleg. ‘To me that sounds just like an ultimatum.’

‘Revising the business relationship,’ said Willick, trying a definition of his own.

‘It would be a great pity if we were to cease being friends,’ said Oleg.

‘I don’t want that to happen,’ said Willick. How the hell would he survive without even the $1,000?

‘I don’t, either,’ said Oleg. ‘You see, John, Moscow’s reaction might be that now we’ve so positively established what you call a business relationship there really isn’t any way you could back away from it.’

At the blackmailing threat the ridiculously grinding wheel’s and cogs blurred in front of Willick’s eyes. He’d always recognized the possibility of it happening. To remind the other man of his own strength, Willick said: ‘I suppose you could force me to go on. But what sort of information do you imagine you would get, if we weren’t friends any longer?’

‘I’ll take it up with Moscow,’ promised Oleg.

‘Please,’ said Willick, belatedly realizing that now he was pleading instead of demanding, like before.

‘It would be a gesture of goodwill if you let us have those names now,’ encouraged Oleg. ‘It might convince Moscow that the increase would be justified.’

As Willick turned to leave ahead of the other man their hands brushed and the details of the CIA’s Moscow postings were exchanged. Willick knew that if he didn’t get to a rest room quickly he’d mess himself.

‘They wouldn’t!’ insisted Natalia. ‘They just wouldn’t! I know they wouldn’t!’ Her eyes were red from the soreness of the operation and there had actually been an injunction against crying but she had not been able to stop herself, so that she wept now from the pain as well as from the abandonment.

‘I don’t believe it either,’ said her grandmother, Galina’s mother.

‘It’s a mistake,’ said the girl. ‘It’s got to be a mistake.’ ‘No,’ said the old woman. ‘There’s no mistake.’ ‘But what’s going to happen to me?’ wailed the girl. ‘I don’t know, my darling. I wish I did but I just don’t know.’