The Disposable Man

Chapter 15

I didn't fly out of the house after Rarig’s call for help. If anything, his impatience slowed me down, making me as careful as he seemed to have become impulsive. I packed a bag with every tactical necessity I could think of, including several weapons, and made sure the house was secure before I left. I longed to leave Gail a note and finally settled for a simple “I love you” on the icebox chalkboard, confident that sooner or later she’d see it.

The reason I knew she’d come by-maybe even move back in-was because I was also aware of how my departure would be received. For the violator of court-ordered condition of release to also be a cop compounds the sin exponentially. Any judge would feel the added insult-Harrowsmith more than most. None of which took into account the predictable howl from Fred Coffin’s publicity machine.

Within a half hour of my no-show at the West Brattleboro barracks, a fugitive arrest warrant would be issued statewide, complete with description, photograph, and known contacts. One accidental sighting by a single cop anywhere in Vermont-and there were hundreds who knew me at a glance-would mean attention unlike any I’d ever received before. If Richard Levay thought he’d had a hard case before, he was about to start feeling like Clarence Darrow at the Scopes trial-assuming he didn’t wash his hands of me altogether.

And yet I felt no real trepidation as I set out toward the Windham Hill Inn. What I’d told Sammie had been the absolute truth. As I saw it, this was my only remaining option. It didn’t matter if Rarig was lying about clearing my name. It didn’t matter if we failed to locate his terrified defector. I wasn’t entirely sure it mattered if nothing turned out as anyone was expecting. The point now was simply to create some random, spontaneous action-a move so utterly against my character that it would fall outside the boundaries imagined by whoever had set me up. As I saw it, I had to knock at least a single support beam to the ground and hope the whole structure followed suit.

These reflections so occupied my mind that when I reached the Windham Hill Inn and saw Rarig and Sammie waiting for me, it felt like I’d just hung up on them.

That impression was not shared by John Rarig. “You took long enough,” he barked at me, pulling open my door.

I didn’t bother responding. Grabbing a small canvas bag from the backseat, I asked, “Which one’s your car?”

Sammie was watching me nervously. “You think this through?”

I gave her a half smile, following Rarig’s pointed finger toward a dark green Ford Explorer. “The point is not to think-surprise the opposition into reacting.”

She fell into step beside me. “You’ll need backup.”

“Maybe, but you won’t be it. I don’t need your busted career on my conscience-if it isn’t too late already.”

She jerked a thumb at Rarig, who was circling the car to get behind the wheel. “If he clears you, I’ll be cleared, too.”

I opened the back door and threw my bag inside. “Nice try, Sam. You already told me you thought he was full of shit.”

She opened her mouth to say more, but I held up my hand. “Don’t. Besides, I need you to stick your neck out in another way. If they find my car here, it won’t take ’em long to start looking for Rarig.”

“Right,” she agreed, caught off guard.

“So ditch it somewhere and cross your fingers. Okay?”

The logic spoke for itself, but her voice was tinged with both sadness and longing. “Okay. Good luck.”

I swung into the seat next to Rarig. “You, too. And promise me you and Willy will work together to cover your asses. I want you both employed when I get back.”

I looked through the rear window as Rarig headed down the driveway. Sammie was standing in the parking lot, her hands by her sides, looking as vulnerable as a lost child in a bus station. I knew it was both momentary and misleading-that cool and decisive action would soon reassert itself-but in that brief moment, I was struck by the loyalty of the friendship between us and hoped to hell I hadn’t burned her by proximity.

I waited until we’d gotten onto Route 30, heading north toward Middlebury, before I asked my still visibly tense driver, “Not that you’ll tell me the truth, but who is it we’re trying to save?”

He gave me a startled look. “You don’t believe me? Then why are you here?”

“Personal reasons. Who is it?”

“His name’s Lewis Corbin-Teich-at least that’s what he goes by now. His old name’s not important.”

“Who made that one up? A committee?”

Rarig actually laughed. “No. He did. Like you said, personal reasons. He’s a sentimental man. I just asked him to come up with something that couldn’t be traced back to him or members of his family. That’s what he chose.”

“And he works at the college?” I was watching Rarig’s hands on the wheel, the blanching of his knuckles. A field operative once, and obviously used to tension, he’d apparently lost the instinct over time. I hoped a little conversation would calm him down, for both our sakes.

“Yes. The language department. Russian’s very big at Middlebury. There’s a huge immigrant population there, a Russian/U.S. think tank, a refugee housing complex for Bosnians, lots of conferences and meetings throughout the year. That’s why he fit in from the start.”

“Weren’t you worried someone would recognize him?”

“His own mother probably wouldn’t. He wears a full beard, and he’s had plastic surgery. He’s just another guy with an accent now.”

“You said Angleton locked him up and dismissed everything he had to offer. What happened after that?”

He paused to pass a slower driver on an inside curve, thankfully with no ill effects. “Two years later, other sources confirmed what he’d told us. Angleton never admitted being wrong, but he let him out-it was as close to an apology as you could get. Unfortunately, it also meant Lew was useless to us. I’m the one who came up with the teaching idea, set up the contacts, established the cover, and got him tucked away. The way we’d treated him was no different from what the Soviets did, but no one seemed to pick up on that. They were all hot to move on to the next item on the list.”

He slid off the road slightly, spitting gravel up into the wheel wells. “Lew was so calm about the whole thing it almost made me suspicious. I would’ve hired a lawyer and sued their pants off, but he didn’t care. Said he was just as happy he hadn’t had to sell out his native land for his adopted one, and that the two years had given him lots of time to learn the language and love the region.”

“He was locked up around here?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah. In Vermont. We had a mountaintop radar installation back then-this was in the late fifties. It was very secluded, well guarded, manned by U.S. service people. Perfect safe house for us. Lew was free to roam sometimes, always with a guard, and he got to know the woods and animals and seasons like a native, even though Angleton would push a button in Washington now and then and have him confined to solitary.”

“Why?”

“No reason. Something would happen on the other side of the world-like maybe one of our agents would get caught and tortured-and revenge would be taken out on Lew.”

It’s been said that police officers-in a world where the most mundane traffic stop may lead to a gun battle-have to be slightly paranoid to survive. I wondered how much worse that must be for those inhabiting the smoke-and-mirrors world of intelligence gathering. It had to elevate paranoia to a whole new level and stamp those in its clutches with a permanent imprint.

I tried getting my thoughts back on course. “If Lew meant so little to you people, why kill him now?”

“I don’t know. There was a connection between Padzhev, Antonov, Lew Corbin-Teich, and me, but it’s ancient history, and I can’t see why it’s resurfaced.”

“Did Snowden play into it?”

“No. This was before his time.” Rarig had come up onto another slower driver and was hanging back about two feet from his bumper. I could see the driver’s silhouette as he repeatedly checked his rearview mirror.

“If we are entering a tactical situation,” I said mildly, “you might want to start thinking about being alive when we get there.”

He completely surprised me by suddenly applying the brakes and pulling over. “You’re right. You drive.”

Back on the road, I looked over at his profile as he stared out straight ahead. “You feeling all right?” I asked.

“Fine. I don’t like to drive.”

“I don’t guess anyone else likes your doing it, either.”

I didn’t get a response, aside from a slight tightening of his jaw.

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” I then said.

He didn’t answer at first but turned away to look out the side window. We were on Route 100 by now, having abandoned 30 to cut up through Londonderry and Rutland to reach Middlebury more directly. I didn’t press him, sensing my last words were still being digested.

Eventually, he said softly, “Yeah-long time.”

“What’s going on inside you, John?” I asked. “I’d kind of like to know before things get hot.”

His eyes narrowed as he looked at me. “I’m not going to fall apart, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Wouldn’t you be, in my shoes?”

He gave me a rueful smile. “Okay. I thought I was free of this kind of thing, that’s all. It’s been a little strange-first Antonov, now Corbin-Teich. Whoever said you can’t go home again was out of his mind.”

“Lew must mean something special to you.”

He went back to staring into some unseen middle distance. “A man comes to you one day, out of the blue, and volunteers to trade all he knows for asylum. He’s up and coming in the KGB, protégé of an influential colonel. He’s building connections, receiving favors, in line for a driver and a dacha and all the other capitalist treats the Communists pretend don’t exist. His wife loves it, his kid’s getting a good education, and yet he asks you to pull him out. Even in a non-cynical world, you’d have to ask yourself, ‘Why?’ ”

I ventured a wild guess. “The colonel was Padzhev?”

“Yeah. He and Antonov, like Batman and Robin, since Antonov was always the go-fer. Lew was their latest project. But their enthusiasm had blinded them to his growing disenchantment. To them, it was a great game-Padzhev was a chess fanatic-but Lew kept looking beyond the job, to a corrupt society of un-admitted haves and have-nots, to the lie of equal opportunity and total employment. Not that our system was that much better. But as he saw it, we weren’t hypocritical about it, and we were pretty much free to try to do something to change it.

“I didn’t believe him at first. Angleton would’ve been proud. I thought for sure he was trying to pull a fast one on us. He gave us some information-to show good faith-and it checked out, but of course it would, so that didn’t weigh much. But the more time I spent with him-the more I listened to him talk-the more I came to think he was the real McCoy. And with that I realized what he was proposing to give up.”

Rarig shifted in his seat and stared at me intently. “Over that span of time, to me Lew Corbin-Teich turned from a prize catch into a hero of sorts. The irony was, of course, that I was totally alone there. My colleagues ended up thinking he was a born liar, and his countrymen labeled him a traitor and put a price on his head.

“But that was fine with him. He even asked me once, ‘What did you expect?’ Knowing everything that was going to happen to him, at least theoretically, he still went ahead. And the kicker is, he was right. After it was all over and I’d gotten him into Middlebury, it was like he’d arrived in Shangri-la. I used to kid him about campus politics-all those academics trying to nail each other’s hide to the wall. He’d just laugh. It meant nothing to him.”

“What about his family?” I asked.

“His wife didn’t suffer much. She was a survivor and remarried well. His son was old enough when he left to take it in stride. He’s in Russia still and apparently doing fine.”

“Sounds like you became his family, in a way.”

“Well, I guess there’s always a bonding between defector and case officer. They even warn you about it. But when they treated him so badly and he bore them no grudge, something snapped inside me. Besides Olivia Kidder, I’d say Lew’s the best friend I ever had.”

I let a long reflective silence follow before rephrasing my original question, “So if it is Padzhev who’s after him now, what’s the motivation?”

“I said it might be Padzhev. And I don’t know why. Padzhev took the defection hard. It was a personal failure, and it stopped his climb within the organization. I sometimes thought one aspect of the Yuri kidnapping was that since I’d been Yuri’s case officer, snatching him would give me a black eye in return. In the long run, though, my career ended because I finally pulled the plug, not because of Georgi Padzhev.”

“But it was connected, wasn’t it?”

He frowned dismissively. “Vaguely. Things had been building to a head. The deal with Lew had left a bad taste, which didn’t improve with time, but I wasn’t as close with Yuri. His disappearance hurt mostly because of the stupidity leading up to and following it. It revealed how out of sync I’d become with the people I was working with. It took me years before I actually retired.”

“Must’ve been weird finding Antonov under that tree-all those memories flooding back,” I said, trying to take advantage of the conversation’s confessional tone.

But he saw me coming. “I never said I found him.”

His cautious reaction hit me with unexpected force. I slammed on the brakes, put the car into a skid, and pulled over to the edge of the road. “You’re something else, you know that?” I yelled at him, feeling days of repressed anger finally exploding. “You go blabbing on about your walk-on-water buddy ’cause of his high moral tone, and then you cover your ass just like Snowden would. You’re the one guy out of all of us who’s risking nothing so far. My people have stuck their necks out on your say-so; I’m looking at jail time ’cause I decided to trust you; even Olivia, I bet, has put her job on the line for you. And you sit there playing hide-’n’-seek.”

I grabbed the door and threw it open, almost losing it to a passing car, whose windy vortex blew around inside the passenger compartment. “Well, fuck you,” I said, getting out and shouting back across the seat at him. “I’ve been dicked around by every bastard I’ve met so far, and I’m goddamned sick and tired of it. All that crap you fed us about turning the inn into a place for people to unload and to share. What a crock. You’re as self-serving as all the jerks you’ve just been dumping on for the last half hour.”

I slammed the door and walked to the back of the car, staring off at the distant hills, fighting to control my breathing. Never before had I lost it so completely-not even when Gail had been raped. I prided myself on keeping cool, keeping my emotional cards out of sight, maintaining a professional stance so that progress could take place, unimpeded by any histrionics from me.

And now I was standing by the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, a warrant about to be issued for my arrest, having thrown the temper tantrum of a lifetime.

And I’d been worried about Rarig at the wheel.

He got out tentatively and took a couple of steps in my direction. “You okay?” he asked, his voice barely audible over the slight breeze.

I turned toward him, much calmer, actually feeling pretty good. “I’m in better shape than you are.”

He nodded. “That’s probably true. It was right, what you said.”

“That you’re a self-serving jerk?”

He looked slightly confused. “I guess. I meant about finding Antonov.”

“And you’re the one who dumped him in the quarry?”

He nodded. “I wanted to see what would happen-who might show himself next. I hadn’t intended that the body be found. Just that someone might come looking. That’s why I took such pains-wrapping him up in a tarp I later burned, ditching him in the boondocks. Lucky he was so small and light. I would’ve buried him if I’d had the time.”

“So you put the finger on Snowden just to stir us up.”

“No. He may’ve been Antonov’s killer. I don’t know why, but I don’t know why not, either.” He spread his hands to both sides. “I honestly can’t tell you what’s going on here, Lieutenant, but my friend is in danger. I’ve been out of things a long time. Alliances shift. I don’t know who the players are anymore-who to trust. I’m sorry I upset you. I guess old habits are hard to break, especially when you’re under pressure.”

Mollified, knowing I really didn’t have any choice but to follow the course I’d set, I returned to the car and got back behind the wheel. Rarig slid in beside me.

I didn’t immediately start driving, however. I faced him instead and asked him point-blank, “You said you had the evidence to clear me. That was baloney, too, wasn’t it?”

“I think the brooch was planted in your coat the night before the jewelry store window was broken-by a black bag crew who entered your home without your knowing it.”

I just stared at him. He stared at his hands. “But I don’t know that for a fact, and I don’t know who might’ve done it.”

I let that sink in, grateful my motivation for being here hadn’t hinged on that detail alone. Then I put the car into gear and pulled out. “Well,” I finally said, “at least that’s a start.”