The Company: A Novel of the CIA (125 page)

"I will, of course, relay the warning to Gorbachev, but if I cannot identify the source he will shrug it off as another attempt by me to drive a wedge between him and the Party loyalists."

Aza said, "But you believe my story, don't you, Boris Nikolayevich?"

Yeltsin nodded. "To tell the truth, I am somewhat surprised by the quantity, and quality, of the people aligning themselves with the putschists, but I don't doubt for a moment that Kryuchkov would oust Gorbachev if he could. You must bear in mind that Kryuchkov had a hand in planning the Red Army assault on Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968. He is certainly someone who thinks in the old style—that the correct dose of force, applied in the right spot at the right moment, can stuff the genie back in the bottle." Yeltsin sighed. "The peasants in the village near Sverdlovsk, where I was raised, used to say that there are fruits which rot without ripening. When I grew older I discovered the same holds true for people. Kryuchkov is an excellent illustration of this axiom. Of course I will not mention your name when I warn Gorbachev. For your part, you must stay in touch with this acquaintance of yours who has penetrated to the heart of the conspiracy. His collaboration will be crucial in the weeks and months ahead."

The after-dinner speeches dragged on and on; Russian bureaucrats, fortified with alcohol, tended to get carried away by emotion. And the emotion that carried them away at the Kremlin state dinner honoring Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, the Russian cosmonaut who was the first woman in space, was nostalgia. Nostalgia, if you read between the lines, for the days when the Soviet Union was able to give the United States a run for its money; when hardware produced in the Soviet factories actually worked; when the time servers who minded the Soviet store were still looked on as an aristocracy.

"Valentina Vladimirovna," the head of the space agency declared, blotting the beads of sweat glistening on his forehead with a handkerchief, "demonstrated to the entire world what Soviet courage and Soviet technology and Soviet ideology could accomplish in the never-ending struggle to conquer space. To our guest of honor, Valentina Vladimirovna," the speaker cried, raising his glass in her direction for yet another toast.

Around the horseshoe-shaped banquet table, chairs were scraped back as the guests lunged to their feet and held aloft their own glasses. "To Valentina Vladimirovna," they cried in unison, and they gulped down the Bulgarian Champagne that had long since lost any trace of effervescence.

From her place at the bitter end of one of the wings of the table, Aza studied the ruddy face of Tereshkova, flushed from alcohol and the stuffiness of the Kremlin banquet hall. Aza was careful to merely sip her Champagne at each of the endless toasts, but her own head was growing woozy. She tried to imagine what it must have been like to suit up in a silver cosmonaut outfit and squeeze yourself into a Vostok capsule and be shot, as if from the mouth of a giant cannon, into orbit around the planet earth. Surely there were experiences that, if you survived them, changed your life; nothing could ever be the same afterward. No amount of denying the experience, no amount of trying to diminish it by putting it into some kind of perspective, could alter its effect. Perhaps it was the late hour—the great Kremlin clock had just chimed midnight—or the lack of air or the alcohol content in her blood stream, but Aza understood that the occasional intersection of her lifeline with Yevgeny's were life-altering experiences. Looking back, she could see that she had never really given her first and only husband a chance to measure up before she began talking about divorce. Measure up to what? Measure up to the epiphany that comes when soul communes with soul and the body, tagging along behind, communes with body, and the woman doesn't wind up feeling cheated.

Across the room the speeches and the toasts continued. Aza noticed Boris Yeltsin, stifling a yawn with his fist, push himself to his feet and come behind Tereshkova at the head of the table and whisper something in her ear that made her giggle with pleasure. Yeltsin patted her on the shoulder, then casually moved on to where Mikhail Gorbachev was sitting. Stooping so he could funnel words into his ear, he said something that made Gorbachev twist sharply in his seat. Yeltsin gestured with a toss of his large head. Gorbachev considered, then got up and followed him with obvious reluctance to a far corner of the banquet hall. Aza could see Yeltsin talking intently for several minutes. The General Secretary listened impassively, his head tilted to one side, his eyes almost closed. At one point Yeltsin, to emphasize a point, jabbed a forefinger several times into Gorbachev's shoulder. When Yeltsin finished Gorbachev finally opened his eyes; from her place at the end of the banquet table Aza could see that he was furious. The birthmark curling across his scalp seemed to redden and gleam. His head snapped back and forth in short jerks as he muttered a curt reply. Then he spun away abruptly and strode back to join in another toast to Tereshkova.

Yeltsin watched him go, then caught Aza's eye across the room and hunched his heavy shoulders in defeat.

3

BASEL, SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1991

"I WASN'T SURE YOU WOULD SHOW UP."

"I almost didn't. I must have changed my mind twenty times before I booked a ticket, and another twenty times before I boarded the plane."

"Well, for what it's worth, I'm glad to see you, Jack."

Currents of moist air from the Rhone ruffled what was left of the once flamboyant mustache on Jack McAuliffe's upper lip and the strands of ash-red hair on his scalp as he sized up his companion through prescription sunglasses. Leo, clearly ill at ease in the presence of his one-time friend and former Company colleague, looked pallid and thin and dog-tired; he had been plagued by insomnia since Yevgeny alerted him to the impending putsch. Now he tugged the collar of the windbreaker up around his neck and the peaked workers cap down to his ears, and squinted at the two coxed eights skidding on their inverted reflections along the surface of the river. "I loved Crew," Jack remarked. For the space of a moment the two men, gazing at the rowers coiling and uncoiling their limbs inside the sleek sculls, were transported back to that last race on the Thames and the triumph over Harvard. "I loved the blisters and the splinters of pain where my rib had mended and broken and mended again," Jack added. "You knew you were alive."

The faint cries of the coxes counting strokes came to them on the breeze. Leo sniggered. "Coach Waltz used to say that rowing was a metaphor for life." with a wistful smile, he turned on Jack. "What a lot of crap—rowing wasn't a metaphor for life, it was a substitute. It took your mind off of it for the time you spent rowing. But as soon as you were finished, reality was waiting in ambush."

The two men resumed walking along the path that ran parallel to the Rhone. "And what was your reality, Leo?"

"Stella. Her Soviet handler who gave me my first lesson in one-time pads and dead letter drops and ordered me to stay close to Waltz because he was a talent scout for the Company."

"Did the son of a bitch actually call it the Company?"

Leo smiled grimly. "He called it glavni protivnik, which is Russian for principal adversary." He walked on for some moments in silence. Then he said, "All that's water under the bridge."

"No it's not, pal. It's not water under my bridge. Just because you sign your letter Gentleman-Ranker doesn't make you one. You're still a lousy traitor in my book and nothing's going to change that."

"When will you get it into your head that I didn't betray anybody. All along I was fighting for my side."

"Jesus H. Christ, you were fighting for Stalinism. Some side."

"Fuck you, too."

Jack wouldn't let go. "I suppose they gave you a medal when they brought you in."

"They gave me two, as a matter of fact."

The two men, close to blows, glared at each other. Jack stopped in his tracks. "Look, you asked for this meeting. You want to call it off, fine with me."

Leo was still angry. "There are things I need to pass on to you."

"Pass, buddy, and then we'll go our separate ways." Jack dropped his chin and looked at Leo over the top of his sunglasses. "You were pretty goddamn sure we wouldn't have you arrested and extradited when you showed up in Switzerland, weren't you?"

"Who are you kidding, Jack? If you ever brought me in, you'd have to explain why you didn't inform the Congressional oversight committees about me seven and a half years ago."

"You think of all the angles."

Leo shook his head. "Not all. I didn't expect that Adelle would curl up in a ditch on a hill in Maryland to sleep off a hangover."

"A bunch of us attended her funeral," Jack said.

"The twins must have been..."

"They were. Sad and bitter and embarrassed, all rolled into one." Leo's chest heaved. Jack gave an inch. "All things considered," he said, "your girls were brave troopers."

Up ahead, a street photographer positioned herself on the path and, raising a Polaroid to her eye, snapped their picture. Leo strode forward and caught the woman by the arm. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he cried.

The photographer, a thin young woman wearing torn jeans and a faded sweatshirt, angrily jerked free. Leo lunged for the camera but the woman was too quick for him. Jack rushed up and grabbed the collar on Leo's wind-breaker. "Simmer down, pal," he said. To the photographer, who was backing away from them both, he said, "How much?"

"Usually it is ten francs. For you and your crazy friend it is double."

Jack pulled a crisp bill from his wallet and, advancing slowly so as not to frighten the woman, held it out. She snatched the twenty out of his fingers, flung the snapshot at his feet and scampered off down the path. "American bastards," she shouted over a shoulder. "Yankee pricks."

Jack retrieved the photograph and looked at it. Leo said, "Burn it."

"I have another idea," Jack said. He produced a pen and wrote across the faces on the picture, Jack and Leo before The Race but after The Fall, and handed it to Leo.

Leo remembered the original only too well. "Another memento of our friendship," he said sarcastically.

"Our friendship ended long ago," Jack shot back. "This is a memento of our last meeting."

The two of them entered a cafe and made their way to the glassed-in veranda cantilevered over the river. Jack draped his safari jacket over the back of a chair and sat down facing Leo across a small table. He ordered an American coffee, Leo a double espresso. After the coffees arrived Jack waited until the waitress was out of earshot, then announced, "Time to get down to the famous brass tacks."

Leaning over the table, his voice pitched low, Leo said, "I have reason to believe—" and he went on to tell Jack about the plot being hatched against Gorbachev.

When Leo finished, Jack sank back into his chair and stared sightlessly at the river. "To know what you know, to name the names you name, you must have a source inside the conspiracy," he finally said.

Leo shrugged noncommittally.

"I take it you won't identify him."

"Or her."

Jack bristled. "Don't play games with me, Leo."

"I'm not playing games. I have a source but the CIA is the last organization I'd confide in. The KGB had you penetrated in my day. For all I know it still does. And the head of the KGB is masterminding the plot."

"What do you expect me to do with this information? Go to the New York
Times
and say that a guy I know has a guy he knows who says Moscow is heading for the waterfall in a barrel. Fat chance."

"For starters we thought—"

"We?"

"I thought you could warn the President, and the President could warn Gorbachev. Coming from George Bush, the word that there is a putsch afoot might impress him."

"You ought to be able to get word to Gorbachev inside Russia."

"Yeltsin has been warning him in a very general way for months. I've been told that he has now warned him in a very specific way, which is to say he's described meetings and named names. The trouble is that if Yeltsin told Gorbachev it was nighttime, he'd assume he was lying and it was really daytime." Leo turned his espresso cup round and round in its saucer. "Am I wrong in assuming that the United States has a vested interest in seeing Gorbachev stay in power?"

"This is a side of you I'm not familiar with—looking out for the vested interests of the United States."

Leo kept a rein on his temper. "Answer the question."

"The answer is evident. We prefer Gorbachev to Yeltsin, and Yeltsin to Kryuchkov and his KGB chums."

"Then do something about it, dammit."

"Aside from warning Gorbachev I don't see what we can do. Unlike the folks you worked for we don't knock off people."

"What about Salvador Allende in Chile? What about General Abdul Karim Kassem in Iraq?"

"Those days are over," Jack insisted.

"They don't have to be. When the Company wanted to eliminate Castro, it brought in the Sorcerer and he farmed the contract out to freelancers outside the Company. This is important, Jack—a lot is hanging on it."

"The Sorcerer is drinking himself into a grave in East of Eden Gardens." He spotted the puzzled narrowing of Leo's eyes. "That's a retirement village in Santa Fe."

Leo sipped his espresso; he didn't appear to notice that it had grown cold. "What about the Devisenbeschaffer? If the putschists don't get Gorbachev on the first try, they'll still have the bankroll in Dresden. They can cause a lot of pain with that amount of money."

Jack brightened. He obviously had an idea. "Okay, I'll see what I can concoct. Give me a meeting place in Moscow. Let's say six P.M. local time one week from today."

"I won't talk to anyone from your Moscow Station—the embassy is riddled with microphones."

"I was thinking more along the lines of sending in someone from the outside."

"Does the person know Moscow?"

"No."

Leo thought a moment, then named a place that anybody ought to be able to find.

Jack and Leo stood up. Jack glanced at the bill tucked under the ash tray and dropped five francs onto the table. Once outside the cafe, both men looked at the river. The sculls were gone; only a gray skiff with two fishermen in it was visible on the gray surface of the water. Leo held out a hand. Jack looked down at it and slowly shook his head. "There's no way I'm going to shake your hand, pal. Not now. Not ever."

The two men eyed each other. Leo said softly, "I'm still sorry, Jack. About our friendship. But not about what I did." With that he turned on his heel and stalked off.

His shoes propped up on the desk, one thumb hooked under a striped suspender, Ebby heard Jack out. Then he thought about what he'd said. Then he asked, "You believe him?"

"Yeah, I do."

The DCI needed to be convinced. "To our everlasting grief, he's demonstrated his ability to deceive us," he reminded his deputy.

"I don't see what he'd have to gain," Jack said. "He used to work for the KGB—he still may be carried on their books in some sort of advisory capacity. That's what happened to Philby after he fled to Moscow. So it's hard to see why he'd tell us about a KGB plot to oust Gorbachev unless..."

The green phone on Ebby's desk rang. He raised a palm to apologize for the interruption and, picking it up, listened for a moment. "The answer is no," he said. "If a Soviet Oskar-II sub had sortied from Murmansk into the Barents, we would have picked up its signature on our underwater monitors... No way, Charlie—the Barents is a shallow sea so there'd be no possibility of running deep... Anytime. Bye." Ebby looked up. "Pentagon received a report that a Norwegian fishing boat saw a submarine snorkel in the Barents yesterday." He picked up the thread of the conversation. "You don't see why Kritzky would tell us about a KGB plot to oust Gorbachev unless what?"

"I racked my brain for possible motives for hours on the plane home," Jack said. "Here's my reading of Leo Kritzky: in part because of his roots, in part because of what happened to his father, in part because of that eternal chip on his shoulder, he was taken in, like a lot of others, by the Utopian rhetoric of Marxism and enlisted in the struggle against capitalism out of a kind of misplaced idealism. His problems began when he reached the Soviet motherland and discovered that it was more of a hell-hole than a workers' paradise. You can imagine his disenchantment—all those years on the firing line, all those betrayals, and for what? To support a Stalinist dictatorship, even if Stalin was no longer alive, that babbled endlessly about equality and then quietly and quickly silenced anyone who suggested that the king was parading through the streets in ratty underwear."

"So the bottom line is that Kritzky feels guilty. That's what you're saying?"

"He feels betrayed, even if he doesn't put it into so many words. And Gorbachev is the last, best hope that he may have been fighting all his life for something worthwhile after all."

"In other words, Kritzky's telling the truth."

"For sure."

"Could the conspirators have taken him into their confidence—is that how he knows what he knows?"

"Not likely. First off, Leo was a KGB agent but the chances are good that, like Philby before him, he was never a KGB officer, which means he was never an insider."

"And he is a foreigner."

"And he is a foreigner, right. In the back of their minds the KGB people must be haunted by the possibility that he might have been turned."

"Who's feeding Kritzky the information on the conspiracy, then?"

"Search me," Jack said. "We can assume that it's someone who trusts him with his life."

"All right. We have true information. I take it to George Bush and I say, Mr. President, there's a putsch being hatched against Gorbachev. Here are the names of some of the plotters. Bush was a director of the CIA back in the seventies, so he knows enough not to ask me how we got our hands on this stuff. He knows I wouldn't tell him if he did ask. If he believes it—a big if—the best he can do is to write a letter to Gorbachev. Dear Mikhail, some information fell into my lap that I want to share with you. Blah-blah-blah. Signed, Your friend, George B." Ebby swung his feet to the ground and pushed himself off the swivel seat and came around to settle onto the edge of desk. "See anything else we can do, Jack?"

Jack avoided his friend's eye. "Frankly, I don't, Ebby. Like you always say, we more or less have our hands tied."

Jack checked the little black notebook that he always kept on his person, then pulled the secure phone across the desk and dialed a number. He reached a switchboard that put him through to the clubhouse. The bartender asked him to wait a minute. It turned out to be a long minute, which meant that the Sorcerer had been drinking heavily. When he finally came on the line, his speech was slurred. "Don'tcha know better than to interrupt someone while he's communing with spirits?" he demanded belligerently.

"I'll bet I can give you the brand name of the spirits," Jack retorted.

"Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle! If it isn't the man his-self, Once-down-is-no-battle McAuliffe! What's up, sport? Is the Sorcerer's Apprentice in over his head again? Need the old Sorcerer to pitch you a lifesaver?"