An Honorable Man (3 page)

Mueller shook his head.

“Kind of you, George, but I know when I'm going on. People sit on that sofa and say nothing because I'm the man in charge, but sometimes I see they're bored. I saw it with my students. Well, to finish the thought. We use intelligence to solve problems and when we look at evidence against our colleagues, our friends,
we need to be rigorous and neutral, so our feelings about the men don't corrupt our judgment. Yes?”

The director rose. He stretched with a grimace. “Gout is a terrible thing. Awful. I don't know what I did in my past life to deserve this disease.” He bent over his thick girth and sent his outstretched fingers toward his slipper's toes. His face flushed purple and he let out a great heave of effort. “I'm not embarrassing you, am I? Sitting cuts the circulation. I need to move around to get the blood flowing.”

The director walked to his desk and lifted a bronze statuette replica of the Nathan Hale statue at Yale. “He was the first American spy. His last quoted words are often misquoted. He didn't say ‘I regret that I have but one life to
give
for my country.' He said ‘I regret that I have but one life to
lose
for my country.' It's an important distinction.
Lose
or
give
. The distinction between the passive and active verbs is the difference between a patriotic spy, the role history has given Nathan Hale, and a man arrested in the course of a poorly planned mission who was hanged when he got caught. We want to believe in honor and sacrifice, and when it doesn't exist we invent it.”

The director returned to his chair. “Look,” he said, sitting, “do you wonder why I asked you here?”

“Yes.”

“I saw your report on the incident at Lincoln Park the other night. You didn't mention the reporter's name. I assume he was from the
Star.
That's who the FBI is close to, and the Republicans in the Senate. They would like nothing more than to publicly
embarrass us. You read the papers. I don't have to spell it out. They've made the State Department into a goddamn haven for effeminate intellectuals.
Sonofabitch
. There is a madness in this country. I can't bear the name calling, the outbursts of hatred and vilification, the repulsive spectacle of red baiting, and the way good men's reputations are tarnished with innuendo.” The director looked hard at Mueller. “They are jealous of our mission here and they don't like that I can call up the White House and get the president on the phone.”

The director struck a match that he held over the pipe's bowl and drew air to brighten the coals. His fingers were stubby and thick. “Were you disappointed the other night?” the director said, looking up.

“At what?” Mueller asked. “That he wasn't caught?”

“Yes.”

“And read about it in the press? No, I was not disappointed.”

“A cure worse than the disease. Very messy. Is Protocol alerted?”

Mueller paused. “I suspect he is. We can't know. The money was there. He might have seen the whole thing from a doorway.”

“Unfortunate. He'll be coy now.”

“He'll go dormant. A week. A month. We got close this time. Very close.”

“What about you?” the director asked.

“I'm not ready to stick around for another six months. That wasn't my deal. I've applied for a teaching position in the fall. I need time with my son.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” the director huffed. “The deal we had. I know. I know. But I can't afford to lose you right now.” He slapped a letter on the coffee table. “It's from the senator. He wants me to answer questions in front of his committee. He wraps himself in his sanctimonious anticommunist rhetoric so the rest of us look weak. He is a drunk, but a dangerous drunk.”

The director slumped in his high-backed chair. “That reporter bothers me. They are raising the stakes for us.”

It didn't have to be said. They both knew. The head of the FBI resented the newly chartered CIA for taking over foreign intelligence gathering and the FBI had no qualms about using the same tactics against the Agency that it used against corrupt politicians and the mob. Gather dirt and spread it.

“They'd like nothing more than to have a headline that provoked the senator to conduct a witch hunt here.” The director leaned forward. “We can't wait for Protocol's next move. We need to accelerate this. Take the initiative while we can.”

Mueller looked at the director, but said nothing.

“Walker's team can't know. The FBI can't know,” the director said. “Do you understand?”

“There's a risk. It's our job to work together.”

“They haven't been good partners on this. Frankly, I don't trust them. We will bend the rules a bit, quietly of course. Are you up for it?”

“It?”

“Altman will fill you in. It's his idea. Let me know what you think. I have my doubts. About the idea. About him.” He looked at Mueller. “Same class?”

“He was a year ahead. Same college. Davenport.”

“So you're friends?”

“Acquaintances.”

“Good man?”

“We were in Vienna together after the war. Before that he was in Berlin.” Mueller stopped himself from elaborating. There was no need to recite his personal history with Roger Altman. The director had their files if he wanted to know the background. He suspected the director had already done that, reviewed their dossiers for that was his job, the men who worked for him, knowing who had which skill, which weakness, and which man was right for the job. “I can vouch for him,” Mueller said.

“One more thing,” the director said. “Leisz. Any more ideas on that?”

“He knew the man. There was no forced entry. His machine uses one-hour tapes and the reel was still running when I found him.”

“Strangled?”

“Piano wire.”

“Poor bastard.” The director dismissed Mueller with a hand wave. “Look after the wife. Make the usual financial arrangements. We don't want her asking questions.”

The meeting ended.

There was no such thing as a typical meeting with the director, but this meeting, unlike others he'd been in, which began with a long-winded preamble that was part anecdote, part lore, part lecture, part pep talk, was different in the director's concerned tone, and different too because he had put the director on notice that he had acted on his desire to leave the Agency.

  •  •  •  

That afternoon, Mueller was surprised to find three men seated in the cramped conference room on the second floor of Quarter's Eye. Mueller expected to find Roger Altman, because that was who the director had asked him to see, but he also saw David Downes, Operations, a short man, insecure and indiscreet, with a stutter that he overcame with deliberate speech, and James Coffin, Counterintelligence. Coffin had been in London during the war assigned to X2, which he coordinated with his British MI6 counterparts, and in his three years there he'd become a bit of an Anglophile. It came out when he spoke, for he used the British “we” in place of the American “I,” and his penchant for secrecy was mistaken by his British friends as polite reserve. His conservative dark suits were bespoke from a shop on Oxford Street and he drove a drafty English sports car wholly unsuited to Washington's weather extremes. Together the four men formed what they called among themselves the Council.

Mueller took the seat he usually occupied in their weekly meeting on Protocol. There was no rhyme or reason to code names. They were picked in sequence from a sterile list and care was taken to select words that had no meaning.

Mueller nodded at one man, then the others. They were side by side, same drawn expression, same reticence while Mueller settled into his seat. Something had been decided.

“Bad outcome the other night,” Coffin said. His shoulders still had the broad lines of someone who'd crewed in college, but the rest of him had gone thin from years of cigarettes and bad scotch.

“It could have been worse,” Mueller said. He had confused them. “Walker had a reporter there.”

“
Jesus.
” This came from Altman, who snuffed his cigarette in an ash tray. The unventilated room was rank with mildew and tobacco.

So they'd been there a while, Mueller thought. There followed spirited debate about the FBI. Coffin called them insular and untrustworthy. Coffin had a beaked nose, black hair swept back from his pale forehead, hornrim glasses that dominated his angular face and concentrated the expression in his eyes.

“They really don't like us, do they?” Coffin said calmly, almost sarcastically.

“They resent us,” Mueller said. “They resent that we're not working for them.”

“How close was it?” Altman asked.

“They found the dead drop. The money was there.”

“Just money?” Altman asked.

“Used currency. Nothing to trace. Twenties. What else do you need?”

Coffin tapped ash from his cigarette. “How did they know it was there?”

“A tail. Chernov's wife. The Russians made a mistake. They didn't expect the FBI to follow her.” Mueller's eyes turned from the winter view outside the window and looked at the three men across the table. “Walker blew it. Protocol was on his way.”

“Scared off?”

“He was there. Saw the whole carnival. There were witnesses.” Mueller looked directly at Altman. Mueller had been
recruited by Altman. There was that obligation. Friendly but not friends. Altman had a handsome face, the same slender figure of their undergraduate days, and he dressed impeccably in double-breasted blue blazer with the flourish of a crimson pocket square.

“What's next?” Mueller asked Altman. “The director said you had an idea.”

“What did he say?”

“That you'd fill me in.”

“Good. Fill you in I will. Walker is playing a game.” Altman talked quickly. That was his style. His speech came in staccato bursts. “A game that we don't want to play. His game. His rules. We'll play our game. Use our rules.”

Altman moved to the bookcase and a combination safe camouflaged by a painting. Liquor inside. Altman poured himself a generous glass and offered a round to the others. Mueller didn't touch his.

“We need a new approach that doesn't involve the FBI. They are too eager to have us look bad. Nothing would please them more than to prove we've got a traitor among us.”

He repeated the word
traitor
as if shocked by it. Mueller preferred
double agent.
It was easier on the ear, more ambiguous.

Altman threw back his drink, finishing it. Leaned against the wall. “A new approach is what we need. You agree, don't you, David? You haven't said a word. Silence is consent here. A new approach. In six months not one name has come off the list. That's a failing grade.”

The list. Five people knew of this list. Four were in the room. Twenty case officers who could be Protocol. Protocol had be
come the catchall that came to mind whenever something went wrong. It was human nature to blame losses on a calculating intelligence rather than on the sloppy work of demoralized staff. And the Council knew they had to take care not to conflate what might be several bad apples into the work of a single man. Doubt, Coffin liked to remind them, was more precious than certainty.

The names on the list had been painstakingly assembled by matching known compromised operations against officers with foreknowledge of the plans; broadened further to include men who could have gotten access if they'd sought it; broadened further to obvious security risks—heavy drinkers, men spending beyond their means, officers with a grudge, men at risk because of some moral weakness. It was a long list. Too long.

Mueller's name could have been on the list, as could the director's for his well-known womanizing, but the list wasn't meant to be a witch hunt. The Council selected men who they believed had access to the Agency's secrets and a motive. Twenty names. Each suspect. The list itself was secret. Mueller knew of it, as did the other men in the room, and the director had seen it. Secrecy protected the investigation from compromise, but it also protected the reputations of the innocent. The end of a good case officer's career was to have guilt unproven and suspicions remain.

Mueller had volunteered his name for the list in the long, spirited debate that accompanied its compilation. He fit the profile, he'd said, without an ounce of irony. No, no, no, he was told. The director pointed out how ridiculous it would look to have a lead investigator be among the prime suspects. “You are in one
category or the other, George. Not both. We've chosen you to investigate this, so your name can't be included.”

Mueller had been grateful for the vote of confidence, but he was disappointed he hadn't succeeded in his ploy to be taken off the Council. Mueller knew the list had a problem. Friendships had protected some of the men in the Agency whose names had been part of the culling process, but were removed because an officer had vouched for his friend. Mueller joked to the Council that there should be another investigation with outsiders to investigate the investigators. They had all laughed. He'd been just a little provocative, but serious too.

“What's the approach?” Mueller asked. He looked at Coffin, who'd been silent since his comment about the bad outcome. Coffin was a brooder, a quiet man, a hard man to know. His style was flinty and precise, and his handwriting was a cramped expression of this tendency toward precision, as was his speech. “Roger will fill us in, George.”

Altman stood at the window looking at the Potomac fading in the early dusk. He turned suddenly, enthusiastically. “We need to take the initiative, George. We need our own source. We need to recruit someone high up in the Soviet embassy.”

“Break the law?”

“It's not breaking the law, George, if it's getting intelligence, which is what we do, what our charter requires. The FBI won't know that the intelligence we're seeking is counterintelligence until we're ready to tell them. We need to control this. Have you got a better idea?”