Fidelity (11 page)

22

I
REGRET
to inform you that, as of this point, direct surveillance of the target has been fruitless.”

They were sitting in a Midtown diner, the kind that was increasingly priced out of the city by boutique cocktail bars and Asian fusion restaurants. They looked conspicuous sitting together, but there was nothing that could be done about that. Tom was six-two vertical and not half that in width, and he dressed like he was about to go to the gym, though a quick look at his belly suggested that he probably was not. Pyotr was a slim man, shorter than average, and he dressed in a charcoal suit that was just a bit too conservative to be described as exquisite.

“To be expected,” Pyotr answered. He spoke Russian in hushed tones. New York City was the capital of the world, any given room might have a dozen people speaking English as a second tongue and caution was second nature to Pyotr. “She's young, idealistic, dedicated to her work. I hardly expected she'd turn out to be shooting heroin over her lunch hour.”

“Perhaps nothing quite so dramatic,” Tom admitted. “But still, most people have something they'd rather keep hidden. Some bit of vice, or sin, or simple foolishness. But this one . . .”

Tom paused as the waitress arrived. Pyotr, abstemious as ever, ordered a coffee, black. Tom had the menu open but had yet to
make up his mind between the fruit cup and something more substantial. As was often the case, his ulcer and his tongue were in direct conflict. He ended up ordering a Western omelet with a side of bacon and french fries.

“White as cream,” Tom finished after the waitress had disappeared.

“And the alternative we discussed?”

“That, however, shows some promise.” Tom took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and passed it over. Inside were a handful of photographs, and Pyotr studied each one carefully.

“Christopher Malloy, age thirty-one. Unmarried, no children. Two arrests for possession of marijuana, one for drunk and disorderly, both quashed before trial. He lives in a sort of squat in what we used to call Bushwick, though I'm sure some clever real estate agent has given it a sexy-sounding acronym of which I'm unaware.”

“ ‘A sort of squat'? What does that mean, exactly?”

“Twenty or thirty years ago it was a warehouse. Now it's a large, decaying structure to which the housing authority does not pay very much attention. In a few years, no doubt, when the next wave of gentrification breaks against its shores, it will be torn down and a glittering yuppie condo building will be put up in its place. In the meantime whoever has the deed on it makes a little bit of money by letting people occupy some of its square footage. It's not exactly legal, but”—Tom shrugged—“it is the sort of thing which has become popular with artist types.”

“Is Christopher one of those?”

“He is rather unkempt, and doesn't hold a real job, and seems to think very much of himself, so in that sense, yes, I would say he is an artist type. As to having any actual creative ability? That would be up to the listener, I suppose. He plays guitar in some sort of”—Tom made a face—“metal band, and busks on occa
sion. I would not expect to see any of his music hit the charts in the near future.”

“And what does Mr. Malloy do, other than not being a particularly skilled guitar player?”

“He pours drinks at a nearby bar a few nights a week. He walks aimlessly around the city. He has a motorcycle which he spends a great deal of time fixing. He has a number of different women that he visits. And he sells a small amount of cocaine now and again.”

Tom had known that Pyotr would show no emotion at this happy piece of news, and indeed he did not. Tom was not quite sure what it would take to excite Pyotr; did not think in twenty years of working together he had seen him flustered or even particularly interested. He had a face like a block of ice left out in a blizzard. “Go on,” he said.

“A sideline, dealing from behind the bar. Small quantities: a few dollars here, a few dollars there. Not the sort of the thing the police would likely be interested in, but . . .”

“A promising avenue of approach, at least,” Pyotr said.

“Such was my thinking,” Tom agreed. “The last month I have had some of my associates patronizing his establishment during the nights Christopher works. Apparently he is a garrulous young man, happy to make new friends. Two weeks ago he sold one of my people a gram of cocaine, just as a way of saying welcome to the neighborhood.”

“What are you thinking?” Pyotr asked.

“I am thinking that perhaps Mr. Malloy, an American raised on rap music and dreams of easy money, might be interested in jumping up a few rungs in the world of narcotics distribution.”

Pyotr chuckled. “You can arrange that?”

“Without difficulty.”

“And what happens afterward?”

“Any number of ways to play the matter from there,” Tom explained. “He could be threatened with arrest and prosecution, though I think we'd be better off with a rather more circuitous route. The first step is to get him buying from us, rather than the other way around.”

“And you think he'll be up for that?”

“I don't see why not. Thus far his involvement in narcotics has been hand to hand, strictly small-time, baggies passed between friends. But from what I have seen of Christopher he is not a man prone to caution. The promise of money should be enough to convince him to ignore any qualms he has about moving up in the ranks. Yes,” Tom said, feeling confident, “I think he would be amenable. As to whether his misfortunes will prove of sufficient concern to his sister for her to put her future on the line, I'm afraid I cannot speak so affirmatively.”

“There is no question,” Pyotr corrected him. “Kay Malloy feels a great sense of loyalty to her brother, would go . . .
will
go to great lengths to save him.”

“I have had people watching your Agent Malloy for months now. In that time she has seen her sibling exactly one time, on her birthday. From what I can tell, her primary, perhaps her sole obsession is her career. Are you certain that she will be willing to jeopardize that for a no-good brother whom she rarely sees?”

“You'll have to go ahead and trust me on the matter,” Pyotr said, smiling. “Christopher is her only living family, and their infrequent contact belies the ferocity of her loyalty.”

“You sound certain.”

“I
am
certain.”

“Why, exactly?”

Pyotr smiled but did not answer. Tom shrugged, unoffended. He did not need to know everything. There were many reasons that Tom was very good at his job: he was industrious, he was
clever, he had a sharp eye for human weakness. But part of this package—and not a small part, either—was that he was comfortable operating as a cog in the wheel, taking firm control over that aspect of an operation that was within his area of expertise and studiously avoiding looking outside of it. And of course Pyotr was the best; Tom was quite sure that Pyotr had never been wrong about something important. If Pyotr did not think that Tom needed to know the identity of his source, then this was certain to be the case.

The waitress returned then with their orders. Pyotr looked for a while at the black coffee in his cup but made no move to drink it. Tom threw himself into his own food with almost manic intensity, smearing butter onto his toast like he was trying to break the thing in two.

“What is wrong, my friend?” Pyotr asked, after Tom had put away half of his omelet and all of his bacon in around forty seconds.

“No disrespect, Pyotr, I am sure your source is reliable. All the same, I dislike such roundabout methods. It relies on too many contingencies, too much presumption. I agree, the brother angle seems our best, indeed our only potential point of access—but I'd still rather we had something firm to use on the target herself.”

Pyotr laughed. “What can I tell you? Kay Malloy is a moralist,” he said, brushing a bit of sugar off the table. “Like her father.”

23

K
AY SIGHED
,
scratched her head, drank a little bit of lukewarm coffee, clicked onto the next subject.

Bartholemew Ides, age forty-seven. Was he the CIA's secret mole? Was he the man responsible for the death of three double agents? Was he the fox in the henhouse? She spent a while digging through his files, every little nugget of information that the FBI had assembled on him, internal personnel reports, past history. Cross-checked this personal data against what little they knew of their spy, discounted him immediately. Clicked through to the next.

It was called the matrix, and it had quickly grown to take over the larger part of Kay's life.

A simple enough process. Start with everyone, literally
everyone
, who knew or may have gleaned the identity of the lost double agents. Next, identify those who may have had access to their compartmented reporting. If one was fortunate, there might be reporting from our double agents concerning the mole. Then start the arduous task of identifying any commonalities between the suspected mole and the lost double agents, things like similar postings abroad or foreign travel by the suspected mole. And then there was no substitute for good old-fashioned investigative work. In this way they might learn about the person who was betraying the country.

Of course, sometimes—often, in fact—the information was
contradictory, or confusing, or oblique. It was more art than science, Kay was swiftly coming to realize, and there was always the nagging fear that you had made the wrong decision, accidentally gone ahead and knocked the mole off the list, set the investigation back months or years or maybe torpedoed it altogether.

Samuel Abondando, age fifty-nine. Was he the culprit? Had he some hidden weakness that the competition had found a way to prey upon, blackmailing or bribing him into treason? Had he been squirreling away SVR funds, dead drops in the middle of the night, burner phones to contact his handler, secret meetings in obscure places?

The initial excitement of being involved in such an important investigation had given way almost immediately to the reality of the process, which was tedious and depressing. Kay was doing her best not to keep an accurate count of how much time she had spent in this exact position in the month since Black Bear had begun, knowing the truth would only make it worse.

“Anything new, Malloy?”

Kay looked up from the pixelated glare of her monitor to see Jeffries standing above her. Eight o'clock on a Wednesday but she showed no particular signs of fatigue, the eyes behind her glasses undimmed, sipping slowly from her ever-full thermos of coffee.

“What do you think?” Kay asked, turning the monitor so Susan could see better.

The ASAC spent a moment staring at the information Kay had up. “Well, he doesn't speak Russian, hasn't been abroad for twenty-five years. No operational experience, no obvious avenue by which he could have been approached. Let's put him in the ‘maybe' pile.”

It took Kay a solid ten seconds before she realized that
­Jeffries was making a joke, another five before she decided it was acceptable to smile at it.

“You need to stop doing this to yourself, Agent Malloy,” Jeffries said, taking a seat, and was it Kay's imagination or had she heard Jeffries offer the slightest expression of relief upon getting off her feet? Was it possible that she might even be human, just like the rest of them?

An absurd suggestion. “What do you mean?” Kay asked.

But Jeffries didn't answer her for a while, turned her eyes like searchlights on Kay, sipped at her coffee. “Do you know who Robert Hanssen is?”

“Former Agent who approached the Soviets to become a spy. Sold out the identities of some of our own top recruitments, passed over signals intelligence. Hanssen had unfettered access to many of the espionage investigations, which provided him with a steady stream of intelligence for sale.”

“And how many years did Mr. Hanssen spy for the Russians before we caught him?”

“Twenty years, if memory serves.”

“Twenty-two, off and on,” Jeffries said flatly. “And it was only after paying an SVR officer millions of dollars and setting him and his family up here in the States that we finally got our proof. Aldrich Ames?”

“CIA equivalent,” Kay answered, enjoying the game. “Worked against the Soviets at the height of the Cold War. Nominally, at least, though in practice he spent the better part of his career doing the reverse. Responsible for the loss of dozens of RIPs and any number of deaths, including the execution of Major General ­Dmitri Polyakov, the highest-ranking Soviet RIP the CIA ever had in place. Passed two polygraph tests and, despite living a lavish lifestyle far beyond what his salary could afford him, was not arrested until
almost ten years after he had begun passing information to Russia. The most significant CIA breach in history.”

“Perhaps not anymore,” Jeffries said. “Kim Philby?”

“The Brits' black eye, and one we still shouldn't let them forget. Became a Soviet double agent in college, before he had ever entered the intelligence world. Joined the SOE, or the Special Operations Executive, during World War II, then MI6. Postings in Turkey, the U.S. Worked for the Soviets for the entirety of his career; at one point was third in line to run Her Majesty's secret service, despite being an alcoholic traitor. Defected to Russia in the early sixties when the heat got too much for him; spent the rest of his life unpunished.”

Jeffries didn't say anything after that, as if waiting for Kay to draw her own conclusions. Then: “We work in a business which prizes secrets, Agent Malloy, and which will pay a high premium for them. There's always a turncoat somewhere, whether you know it or not. You know I was part of the team that went after Hanssen.”

Kay's ears perked up: the chance to fill in the blank spots in Jeffries's past with real data rather than gossip was not one to be passed up. “I didn't know that.”

“For a long time we thought it was this CIA officer; spent months, years, tearing apart this poor guy's life, setting up false flag operations . . .” Jeffries shook her head sadly at the wasted effort. “It starts to get to you if you let it, digging through strangers' evils, walking around all day looking at your colleagues and coworkers, wondering which of them has decided to betray their country and their people for a little bit of money, or to get out of some difficulty, or for some other horrible, petty reason. And it's always petty reasons: they've been passed over for promotion, or they get made fun of in the break room, or they want cash
to impress a woman half their age.” Jeffries took her glasses off, rubbed at the wrinkles around her eyes.

It was, Kay felt certain, the longest conversation she had ever had with Jeffries about something that was not directly related to their work, which gave some hint of Jeffries's personality beyond the hyper-competent facade that she stood behind.

“But you can't let it get to you, Malloy,” Jeffries said, her shield back up. “Because if you lose your mental balance, then you're useless to us; then all of your talent and drive becomes a liability. Staying here late every night, obsessing over the details of the case—it's counterproductive in the long run. It's going to dull your edge. This isn't a sprint; it's a marathon. You need to find a way to balance this with other things, whatever those other things are. You can't spend every night and every weekend in front of the computer—can't and still be any good to the mission. You have to put something else into your life besides counterintelligence.”

Which was strange to hear coming from Jeffries: unmarried, no children, no hobbies that anyone knew about, came in earlier and left later than anyone else on the team—or at least had come in earlier and left later than everyone else on the team before Kay had arrived. “What do you do for recreation?”

“I go paintballing,” Jeffries said flatly.

It occurred to Kay that she had no idea whether this was a joke, and she didn't think she'd have any luck in reading the truth behind Jeffries's imperceptible eyes.

“It's been a very long day,” Jeffries said, finally, getting up from her seat. “Think about what I said. You have too much potential to burn yourself out so early.”

“Thank you,” Kay said, surprised as much by the sudden termination of the conversation as she was by Jeffries's unexpected moment of intimacy.

Kay sat in her chair awhile afterward, rubbing at her eyes. Thought about knocking off and going home, maybe grabbing a drink. Or giving Christopher a call; they hadn't chatted in a while, which probably meant he was into something he shouldn't be. Or Uncle Luis, maybe, or Alice. Kay was young, she was pretty, she had a little bit of money, she was in the greatest city in the world. There had to be something she could do, right? Right?

Kay sighed, stretched, clicked onward.

Joe Emanuel, age forty-seven.