The Bearpit

35

‘So there has to be another one, buried deep?’

It was Myers who voiced the inevitable conclusion, on the day the Crisis Committee agreed from the review of the final computer analysis that neither Latin America nor the Caribbean had featured in any assignment with which John Willick had ever been associated from the time of his recruitment into the Agency.

‘Inevitably,’ said Crookshank.

‘We can’t reassign every bloody agent in the two regions!’ protested Norris. ‘It would come to hundreds.’ Another twenty people disclosed to the KGB by Willick had been recalled from Finland and England after being identified as CIA operatives in left-wing publications. At least there had been no further attacks, as there had been in Bonn.

‘We’ll have to do exactly that, over a period. We can’t do anything else,’ said Myers.

‘And every analyst working out of here on raw material coming from anywhere in the area will have to be moved, as well,’ insisted Crookshank.

‘You know what you’re saying, don’t you?’ asked Norris. ‘You’re saying that the Agency has got to undergo the biggest agent turnover it’s had in its entire history. And it’s not just a question of moving people around. Some of these guys have been specifically trained for nothing else: cultivated for a lifetime’s career. Most speak Spanish better than English.’

‘Then a lot more are going to have to be specifically trained,’ said Crookshank, unimpressed.

‘I know Ramon Hernandez appears to check out but I think he should be isolated, too, until we’re one hundred per cent sure,’ said Myers.

The other two men nodded in agreement, effectively closing off from the CIA its best and most loyal source in Nicaragua.

‘And we mustn’t lose Kapalet, just because he’s being withdrawn to Moscow,’ said Crookshank.

‘I don’t intend to,’ said Myers. ‘I’m recommending to the Director that because of their special relationship Wilson Drew should be shifted there from Paris to continue as control.’

‘It’s not going to be easy for Kapalet, is it?’ said Norris, recalling the warning that had come from France after Drew’s last meeting with the Russian.

‘Nothing’s easy about this whole fucking mess,’ said Myers. ‘We can’t judge until we know the department or division to which he’s being posted but he could be even more important there at headquarters than he was in France.’

‘What about Levin?’ asked Crookshank.

‘Vital,’ replied Myers at once. ‘There isn’t anyone more important. I still think we might shortcut the search for the Latin American source through him.’

‘How?’ asked Norris.

‘He’s Russian so let’s use his knowledge of the way they operate and react,’ proposed the security chief. ‘Let’s get as much and as many electronic intercepts of Soviet traffic as we can, from the National Security Agency. Use our own stuff, too. And put him to work on them. Working from source backwards, we might be able to find the spy without all the turmoil we’ve been talking about.’

‘It’s an idea,’ agreed Norris doubtfully. ‘But it would mean disclosing all our sources. And those of the NSA as well.’

‘That’s a minimal consideration,’ argued Myers. ‘Levin’s on our side now. He’s proved that, unquestionably.’

‘If it’s a shortcut to discovering who our second spy is, then I’ll go for it,’ endorsed the lawyer.

‘It would require taking him on,’ pointed out Norris.

‘We’ve made consultants out of defectors before,’ reminded Myers. ‘Yuri Nosenko was appointed when he came across and told us the KGB had no part in Kennedy’s assassination.’

‘Not as quickly as this,’ said Norris.

‘Time we don’t have,’ said Myers.

‘I don’t think we can bring Levin properly aboard soon enough,’ said Crookshank.

Yuri made more than one trip to the Chase Manhattan Bank. On the first, by himself, he retrieved and recopied both sets of files, including this time the tyre-mark photograph. The originals he sealed and addressed in an envelope. The copies he put in the briefcase he intended taking with him, back to Moscow.

Caroline accompanied him on the second visit, frowning with curiosity as they went through the formality of signatory and withdrawing authority being extended to her, and then looking more puzzled in the vault itself, when she saw the envelope addressed to the New York Times.

‘I thought you worked for an Amsterdam magazine?’

‘I do,’ said Yuri. This was a very special assignment.’

‘Special enough to be kept in a bank vault!’

That special,’ assured Yuri. ‘You understand completely what I want you to do?’

‘Not exactly the intelligence test of the decade, is it?’ she said. ‘You’re going away on an assignment tomorrow and if you’re not back within a week I’m to collect the package from here and post it to the Times.’

‘Right,’ said Yuri. It was incomplete and bewildering and he had no idea if the newspaper would make any use of it arriving anonymously. But if anything happened to him this time in Moscow and they did publish, it might just conceivably cause Kazin and Panchenko harm.

‘Why not just give it to them now?’

‘It would be too soon.’

‘Remember what I said, that first night?’

‘What?’ he asked.

That you were mysterious,’ she reminded him. ‘And you are. I still don’t know a damned thing about you, with one important exception: how I feel about you.’

The safe-deposit box also contained the still unread letters between his father and mother, Yuri realized. It was preposterous – insanity – to go on with Caroline like this. He would end it shortly, he promised himself. But not quite yet. He needed her now.

Kazin was surprised that Vladislav Belov had not volunteered the open commitment he had once shown, particularly now that the control of the First Chief Directorate was undisputed and beyond challenge. The man was a fool, like Panchenko was a fool although for different reasons. Kazin decided he didn’t need supporters or sycophants any more. His position was beyond dispute: he was unassailable.

Kazin gazed across his desk at Belov and said: ‘The New York courier is being recalled?’ One of Kazin’s new edicts, since his sole appointment, had been that he was advised of all agent movements.

‘Yes,’ said Belov. Why so much interest in Yuri Malik?

‘Why?’

‘Some time ago we obtained partial copies of a new IBM computer design: he is bringing back the remainder.’ It was the man’s function in the United States, scarcely requiring a personal explanation, surely?

The idea was a sudden one. Kazin said: ‘Are you satisfied with his performance in New York?’

‘Completely,’ said the chief of the American division. ‘He’s carried out everything asked of him and in addition successfully identified the head of the publicity division to which he’s attached as a homosexual. We are instigating a blackmail entrapment.’

‘I am unsure he was not prematurely promoted,’ declared Kazin. A decision of his father’s, after the inquiry embarrassment: proper that it should be rescinded, then. And Kazin was having second thoughts of trying to manipulate the man’s embarrassing discovery by the Americans. A feint, in the attack of his own personal chess game. The game – the pleasure of the torment – would be far better if the man were withdrawn here to Moscow, to be prodded and goaded. Making the decision, Kazin said: ‘See him yourself when he gets here. Tell him he is being reassigned: that he is to settle whatever is outstanding in America and prepare to return permanently.’

‘To do what?’ asked Belov. The permanent recall was ridiculous, an order with no logical reason or purpose.

The man’s attitude was dangerously near contempt, discerned Kazin. Perhaps someone else who needed reassigning, into oblivion. Savouring his power as if he could actually taste it, Kazin said: ‘Whatever I decide.’ He would have to devote more thought than he had to that hurriedly conceived idea at the graveside. Definitely too rushed: he’d do better next time.

It was as if Kazin were paranoic about the son of the former joint Chief Deputy, thought Belov. He said: ‘The last batch of CIA identification is going to be the most embarrassing. We’ve got the names of forty headquarters officers at Langley: every division chief and most of their deputies.’

‘And the chaos has only just started,’ mused Kazin.

‘The Foreign Ministry have confirmed Washington’s application for a diplomatic visa for Wilson Drew,’ disclosed Belov.

‘Maintaining Kapalet’s control?’

‘Obviously.’

‘Through whom we can go on feeding them what we like, for years,’ said Kazin, reflective still. ‘This really has been the most brilliantly devised and executed disinformation coup!’

The megalomaniac appeared sincerely to believe he was its architect instead of its on-the-sidelines approver, Belov realized, incredulous. Kazin had to be mentally unstable: there wasn’t any other explanation.