Tool of the Trade

  “Makes torture obsolete,” Jefferson said. As usual, Shilkov ignored him.

  “But wait. She wasn’t in contact with him until the Cabin John thing, right? Your people in Boston had her.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Then she couldn’t know where he was going. She couldn’t know about Leningrad.”

  “Ah. This is where you have to trust my expertise. My knowledge of human nature. Especially when it comes to people lying, or telling the truth.”

  “Go on.”

  “I found that she knew nothing more about Foley’s power than we did. As I told you a few days ago. But I went a little further, and told her what we suspected: that Foley had somehow discovered or invented a technique or substance or device that completely subverted a person’s free will. That it would make him do exactly what Foley asked, even kill himself.

  “She said she had suspected that for some time, from various questions we had asked. But it wasn’t anything she had any knowledge of.”

  He took out a yellow cigarette and tapped it on his thumbnail, inspected the end, and lit it carefully with a wooden match. “And so I asked her about herself. What would she have him do with this power?” He watched the match burn almost to his fingers, then dropped it in the ashtray.

  “Go to Leningrad?” Leusner said. “Disrupt the summit?”

  “Not exactly. I’m only inferring that. What she said specifically was that he could get into government, wind up next to the president, talk him into making peace. She thought about it some more and said that he wouldn’t have to limit it to the president of the United States. He speaks so many languages so well, and so forth. She had a high opinion of him.

  “She even mentioned Russian specifically, and Vardanyan. I didn’t think much of it at the time, since there was obviously no way Foley could get within ten kilometers of the premier without permission. Later, after Cabin John, I thought about the summit.”

  “That’s fantastic,” I said.

  He smiled, a baby’s plump lips. “Consider it. How many people go along with the president? A planeload? Two planeloads?”

  “It’s just possible,” Leusner said. “According to her profile, she was very passionate, even fanatical, about peace, and I think he may be, too.”

  “That’s all over his MIT dossier,” I said. “He jokes with his students about marrying a hippie, about neither of them ever recovering from the sixties.”

  “Worth checking. Jefferson, you get in touch with the Secret Service and get all you can about everybody going to the summit with Fitzpatrick. Better ID all the press, too; I suppose they’ll have a separate plane. Use my name freely, but don’t tell anybody what you need the information for.” Jefferson nodded and headed for the phone in our room.

  “Bailey, you go through State and try to get us diplomatic clearance into Leningrad. We get into the visa red tape and the Soviets will hold us up till Labor Day, on principle, if they smell the Agency.”

  She stood up and dropped the envelope into Shilkov’s lap. “If we do find Foley, you’re free to go. Eric Langer, the quiet, tall fellow from our Technical Services section, will bring your tickets and instructions.” Shilkov started to say something, but she turned away abruptly. “I’m bushed. Is there an unoccupied bed around here?”

  “Sure; follow me.” I led her into the bedroom. Jefferson’s bed was made up with military precision; you could bounce a quarter off it. I was obscurely gratified that she chose my rumpled one.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: NICK

  It gave me an odd feeling to be in a room with six KGB men and six of their American counterparts, CIA and Secret Service. It was the room where the “confidential” part of the summit talks would be held. All twelve were presumably electronic entomologists. Menenkov and I had been invited to watch the proceedings, as nontechnical witnesses. He seemed amused but alert.

  The Russians had proposed a fine old nineteenth-century drawing room in the private part of the Hermitage, which the Americans instantly vetoed. Full of nooks and crannies and doubtless already wired for sound with fifth-generation Japanese smart bugs. The Americans suggested an unornamented Finnish-modern meeting room at the Leningrad, overlooking the Neva, but the Russians said “no windows.” They said the Americans could bounce a laser off the glass from orbit; pick up the speech vibrations. The CIA men laughed and said they wished they could. (I would have assumed that particular trick to be physically impossible, if they hadn’t laughed.)

  The two teams finally reached uneasy agreement, settling on a modest interior meeting room in the Leningrad. All the rooms on its floor and the floors above and below were emptied, mutually inspected, and sealed off, which meant that half of our protocol team was sent grumbling to the Metropole downtown.

  They wouldn’t have to stay there long, though. This was April 29. The back streets of Leningrad were filling up with provincial marching bands practicing, athletic teams going through routines, and elaborate floats decorated in themes of mir, which in Russian means both “peace” and “world.”

  If things go well with Vardanyan and Fitzpatrick tomorrow, they’ll have something to mir about.

  I took a nap after the debugging session, knowing that Fitzpatrick would be coming in around seven. The dream came back again. I think.

  Nothing like this has ever happened to me. I appear to be having the same dream, or a dream about the same things, every time I get into REM sleep—and then I strongly suppress the dream upon awakening, or before. It must be a memory of Leningrad, but a bloody arm? I would remember it if it were significant. There are a hundred memories from that time I would suppress if I could. Plenty of disembodied arms and legs, sometimes heads, sometimes worse. I learned what the female genitalia look like from the immodesties of two frozen, shattered bodies, entwined. That is a memory that comes back unwonted.

  The cliché truism that people who gravitate toward the study of psychology do so because they are profoundly hurt in their own minds….I know from observing my colleagues that there is more than a grain of truth in that, and of course they know it from observing me. What if they found out I was a murderer, a spy, and a megalomaniac out to change the world? Some would shrug and say, “What did I tell you?”

  I was with the party that met the president at the airport, but we only exchanged a cursory greeting as I introduced Menenkov. He then drove to the hotel with a limp full of advisers, having no need for a translator. I went back with Menenkov.

  We drove for a while in companionable silence. “It is frustrating,” Menenkov said. “When I began training for this job—as a child, really, just after the war—many people were saying that the United States was going to emerge a huge and powerful empire. Having suffered no damage in the war, having all of its industrial capability intact.”

  “That’s about what happened.”

  “Well… it’s not ‘empire’ the way I mean. Some of our people do talk about the American empire, meaning your country plus all the client states embraced by NATO, SEATO, ANZNAT, the OAS—”

  “Not the most loyal clients.”

  “I know. That’s what I mean. The American hegemony that we were going to face, it’s not really there. It’s as if you took aim at a target, and as it drew near, it broke up into many targets of various sizes. Still one largest piece, but the others can’t be ignored.” He laughed. “I should not indulge in metaphor in a foreign language. I don’t mean shooting at you.”

  “I think I understand. But should you be saying this to an ex-CIA agent?”

  “You’re right, it hardly seems fair. Since I have myself never had anything to do with the KGB.” We both laughed. “What I mean is that, in a curious way, it would be easier for us to negotiate if it had come about that way. America a monolithic power, with no complicating alliances.”

  “Some country has a proverb saying you should choose your enemy well, because you’re fated to become him. Is that Russian?”

  “Probably. I could never keep them all s
traight.” He tapped on the steering wheel with a ring. “That can be taken two ways. Do you want to become like us?”

  “I don’t know Russia well enough to say,” I said, and the truth startled me.

  “Perhaps we can compromise and each wind up with the best of both worlds. No McDonald’s.”

  “Okay, and no so-called champagne.” We laughed together. I turned on the watch at its highest setting.

  “Can I see Vardanyan tonight, with you along, and nobody else?”

  “That shouldn’t be any problem.”

  “Can we set it up so that it’s in a ‘safe’ room, where we won’t be overheard?”

  “I can’t speak for the CIA. No KGB will be listening.”

  “You are a KGB officer yourself.”

  “Of course.”

  “What rank?”

  “Major general. I am the highest-ranking KGB officer in Leningrad, currently, I believe.”

  “Wonderful. You will arrange this meeting tonight under some reasonable pretext. Then come get me.”

  “All right.”

  “You will follow these orders but forget that I gave them to you. You will not recall any of this conversation since I said, ‘Can I see Vardanyan tonight?’” “All right.”

  I turned off the watch. “Looks like rain.” He peered up through the top of the windshield. “We should just make it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: JACOB

  There was no way the State Department could officially get us to Russia the day before May Day, short of stuffing us into a diplomatic pouch. But the CIA does have resources.

  A Lion’s Club tour group was delayed by engine trouble in Los Angeles long enough for me to fly to Seattle and intercept them, bearing passport and visa that had been routinely processed “just in case.” I was a Lion from Marlow, Oklahoma. I hoped nobody would question me about that. Do they still have cowboys and Indians down there? Are they rich with oil money? I’d have to make up answers.

  By way of cover, they gave me a handful of Southwest Equity Insurance Company business cards and a fake-leather Traveling Presentation Kit. If anybody got too curious, I would start selling him a policy.

  There was no trouble from my fellow passengers, though. The airline had provided free drinks during the delay in Los Angeles, and there had been a party. When the plane picked up our small contingent at Sea-Tac airport at midnight, only the crew were conscious. When the Lions woke up the next day, flying over the Arctic, they were subdued. There was an inflight movie where the main character was a car. During it I memorized large parts of Fodor’s Russia, especially the street map of Leningrad, since I would have to break away from the tour group and rendezvous with Harriet. (Actually, we should have wound up in the same hotel.)

  We spent a couple of hours in Helsinki, waiting in lines, and then there was a short flight to Leningrad, and the fun began.

  Six lines through Passports; I chose the shortest one, which turned out to be the longest. After an hour I finally got to the glass booth. A nineteen-year-old KGB private said, “Pazz board,” and I gave it to him. For a good two minutes he didn’t look at it, just stared at me, unsmiling, directly at my face. I assumed he did that with everyone, and returned his stare with a pleasant smile.

  “—You speak Russian, don’t you?” he said in a sudden loud, staccato voice, accusing. I tried not to change expression.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t speak Russian.”

  “—You aren’t fooling anybody.” I guessed this was also part of his routine. He went through my passport page by page, though it was newly issued; blank except for the small stamp on the fourth page, from Helsinki. Suddenly he glared up at me. “Ah!”

  He pulled a hand mike from the wall. “—Please, Captain, there is an irregularity, Kiosk Four.” He hung the mike back up and redoubled the intensity of his stare.

  After a minute the captain showed up. They exchanged whispers while he stared at me from his loftier rank. He also scrutinized my passport and then put it in his shirt pocket.

  He stepped out of the booth. “Follow me,” he said with an accent good enough for Hollywood. “Bring your luggage.”

  We walked away from the luggage-inspection tables and down a corridor that smelled of mildew and vinegar. “In here.” He opened a door. “Wait.”

  A table and two wooden chairs under a bare hanging light bulb. A toilet and wash basin in a dingy alcove. No windows. The door closed behind me, and he locked it with a key. I leaned against the table and waited uneasily. What could they do to a CIA agent entering Russia illegally? I knew what they could do. They could make me disappear, and the Agency wouldn’t peep. Wind up working on a hydroelectric project in Khatanga until I froze solid, which would be sometime in early June. Or they might try to trade me for a couple of real spies.

  Interesting thought: I could finger Shilkov for them. All I want is my freedom and a Hero of the Soviet Union medal.

  After some rattling and muttering the door creaked open and the KGB captain returned, followed by a skinny man in a dark suit. “Sit down.” I did, and the captain sat across from me. He leafed through the passport and stared at the first two pages.

  “Who is the mayor of Oklahoma City?”

  “How should I—”

  “Your passport was issued there, was it not? It is the capital of your state.”

  “But I’ve only—”

  “You were born there.” To the man in the suit he said “—He lives outside the biggest city in his state, the city where he was born, but he cannot name the mayor.”

  “My parents moved away from Oklahoma when I was two,” I said rapidly. “I hadn’t set foot in the state until I moved back there last year.”

  “—He says that…”

  “—I understood. Ask him why he joined the flight in Seattle. Los Angeles is closer to Oklahoma.” The captain translated the question.

  “I have friends there. It didn’t cost much extra. What is all this about, anyhow? Do you take one person every hour and give him the third—”

  “Not at all,” said the civilian in thick English. “Show him.”

  He opened the passport to the picture on the second page. “Look at this.” He ran his fingernail under one edge, and it came loose. “I have seen many thousands of American passports. All had pictures very firmly glued down.”

  Oh, shit. Superspy. “I—I wouldn’t know anything about that. I thought they came that way; I’ve never had a passport before.”

  “Yes, of course. But you must see that if this truly was not your passport, it could be the case that…” he paused to retrieve the subordinate clause—“You have taken the original picture off and glued yours on, but… without enough glue, or the wrong glue. You see why we are suspicious?”

  “Look, though.” I grabbed the passport and ran my finger along the embossed stamp that covered both the photograph and part of the page. “How could I fake this? It says… ‘Department of State, United States of America’—how could I fake that?”

  “I’m sure there are ways.” He looked up at the “civilian.”

  “—It’s probably nothing. You’d better have the forensic people look at the passport, though. And search his luggage very thoroughly, and his person.” That sounded like hours. Not to mention Siberia.

  “I’m afraid we will have to detain you for a little while,” the captain said, putting my passport back into his pocket. “I will send somebody with a cup of coffee and a roll.” He stood up.

  “Hold it.” I stood up, too. “I’m with a tour group. Are you going to hold all of them up too?”

  He picked up my suitcase. “Arrangements will be made.”

  After about an hour, my coffee and roll appeared. They looked an awful lot like lukewarm tea and a piece of black bread. Better than nothing. I worried for another hour about being searched, which I was sure would include a colonoscopy with a dimestore flashlight, but when it happened, I wasn’t even made to undress. An unsmiling lieutenant patted me down in a desultory w
ay and left without a word.

  I’d first gotten in line at eleven; at four, an Intourist lady showed up with my luggage and passport and no apologies. She led me to the moneychangers, where I got a hundred dollars’ worth of good, soft Russian currency, and then I was given my very own tour bus, evidently the one that had taken the other Lions into town earlier.

  She said our hotel had been taken over by American government people here for the summit, but we were going to have a much nicer hotel in the center of the city, the Astoria. Full of history and Old World charm. That was nice, but I was supposed to meet Harriet at the ninth-floor tearoom of the Leningrad Hotel, at four, six, or eight. Maybe I should argue, hey, I’m an American government person… no.

  It was a long drive through cold, gray rain. No Russian road signs, no billboards to break the birch-and-pine-forest monotony. Decades after conjugating my first Slavic verb, I finally get to Russia, and it looks just like upstate Michigan.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: NICK

  The dream was especially bad last night. I woke up three times, always with the bloody arm fading from memory. In the last two, there was somebody with the arm, brandishing a knife. I had hoped to get plenty of sleep for today’s challenge. Not to be. But I had a long soak, and Valerie gave me a good rubdown. We talked about where we might be next week. If we don’t wind up in custody by this afternoon.

  Through Menenkov and Vardanyan, I had made certain arrangements with the Soviet press, and their American and European counterparts knew that something was up. I spent most of the morning strolling from room to room with my watch, making sure the fourth estate of the Free World would not be scooped by the likes of Pravda and Izvestia. By noon, everybody knew that something big was coming down, but nobody who was constrained by the truth could claim any details or reliable attributions. I assumed that by the time of the meeting, two o’clock, people’s imaginations would have taken care of that.

  The Americans got together at noon in a small banquet room for roast beef sandwiches and potato salad, courtesy of the White House cooks, which seemed strangely exotic after all the caviar and pickled vegetables. Valerie and I were not seated with Fitzpatrick, who was going over last-minute details with his aides. In a few hours they were going to wonder why he’d withheld his blockbuster. But that was consistent with his personality. He has a liking for grand, dramatic gestures.