The Falstaff Enigma (3 page)

Within four hours David Margolis had received his confirmation.
Vladimir Ustinov existed, was a scientist at a secret center known as the Zhukov Research Facility, and had been in Kiev the third week of February.

Twelve hours after receiving his confirmation, David had asked the CIA to arra
nge the exchange and they had obliged. Of course they were to be made privy to Govenin's revelations. Margolis had spent the past twenty-four hours in transit to this spot five kilometers outside the typical North German village of Hitzacker.

The exchange occurred without event
; the Govenins would soon be whole again.

Soft gray puffs of smoke billowed from the concrete runway of Ben-Gurion International Airport as the El Al 707 touched down. On board was a very bewildered Soviet family who had been told of their impending journey to Israel only seventy-two hours before. Two rows behind them sat David Margolis. He was wearing an old wool suit that desperately needed cleaning. Its gray color fit perfectly the somber mood of the family in front of him who, it seemed to David, did not share their patriarch's desire to leave the motherland and certainly hated all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense. David was skimming the pages of the London Times, which he had picked up at Orly Airport before the flight. But the words were not getting past his eyes; his thoughts were totally absorbed with what he would learn in approximately twenty-four hours.

What did Ustinov know?
Was he a KGB plant designed to send naive agents on a wild goose chase? It was a ploy used often by both sides. "Disinformation," as it was called in the U.S. and Britain. Worse yet, was his newly acquired compatriot really an operative with Soviet intelligence? Or the CIA? Or MI-6? Or any of a hundred intelligence services around the globe trying to test Mossad's capabilities? David would learn the truth. Experience taught him that it inevitably came to light. For now, however, he had to trust his intuition and it told him that Dr. Govenin had an authentic story, an ace he was using to achieve his personal ends. Margolis shook his head as he thought how quickly Govenin had adapted to capitalist ways, but then again the Soviet Union had a lot more capitalism than anyone on either side cared to recognize. How else could they get anything done there?

In
the airport, David's men were in position. Two waited at the gate, one kept watch in the concourse, one prepared to chauffeur the Govenins in a late model Chevrolet, a huge car in Israel. Two more waited in a chase car. All were in radio contact. But Alexandr Govenin would not be waiting; he was still at the safe house. He did not know that his longed-for reunion was less than an hour away. The stakes were too high for him to be apprised of the timetable.

David Margolis and the Govenin family were last off the
plane. The reception area had emptied except for the two Mossad agents, who were young but experienced veterans. As the Govenins emerged from the ramp one of the agents walked quickly to their side while the other headed toward the concourse, eyes darting from face to face looking for the out-of-place person or persons. He was in contact with the other unseen agents and everything appeared to be going smoothly. It was a Thursday and a little before noon and David was grateful for the lack of congestion.

A face in the crowd.
David's eyes riveted on the face of a man heading their way, a man about forty and wearing a blue suit. He reminded David of a typical American banker.
American. That's it!
David recalled seeing the man's photograph six months earlier; he was a CIA agent known to work the Middle East area.
Of course
. The CIA had a big stake in this package and they were certainly not going to trust the Mossad any more than they had to. David was happy to have this uninvited help but was disturbed that none of his men had picked up the CIA's presence. They would be chastised for their error.

David's eyes were red; he hadn't slept well the night
before. As promised, he had given the Govenins twenty-four hours of peace at Yahweh. Now Dr. Govenin was to fulfill his end of the bargain.

"I've got two plants next door and two on the street.
The two on the street are Alan and Yitzhak. The Company should have a few men around, so don't get too jumpy. Remember that if the Russians were going to try anything they certainly would have done it in Russia, not here. So this will be quite routine. Just get Govenin back here. I'll expect you back within an hour."

David's instructions to his men were meant to be reassuring, but that fact in
itself seemed to unsettle the Mossad agents. "And watch out for any Company tricks. They might try to grab Govenin for themselves." David had his best transport man heading this mini-operation. He knew the job would be done correctly.

The Mo
ssad agents arrived in two cars, each with curtained rear compartments. The first pulled into the garage of the safe house where Govenin waited with a small overnight case. He had told his wife not to expect him back for a couple of days but he really had no idea how this interrogation would progress. After a brief minute the first car pulled out and started its way to Mossad headquarters, but Govenin was not in it. The first car would act as the decoy, a decision that was made only at the last second and only at the whim of the commanding officer on the scene.

The second car pulled into the garage and the valuable cargo was quickly loaded.
The car was back on the street just as quickly, but this time it headed in the opposite direction from car number one.

The car turned right onto Alle
nby Street. The traffic was moderate and the car was making good time. The day was Saturday, May 14, 1983. It was Shabbat and while Tel Aviv prided itself on being a modern, secular city, there were enough observant Jews that traffic was noticeably lighter every Saturday. Mossad headquarters, in the heart of the city, was not more than fifteen minutes away once they made their way onto Ayalon highway. After a few minutes, the car turned left onto a smaller road, the driver maneuvering to find the entrance ramp onto Ayalon.

"Go up tw
o more streets and turn right.” The orders of the man in the passenger seat went unquestioned. In fact, he was the only one who spoke during the journey. In the back, Govenin seemed flattered by all this manpower devoted solely to him. He was anxious to start telling his story; he had rehearsed it a thousand times since the night he went to drink and talk with the friend he had not seen in six years. The officer in the front seat continued with his orders. "When we arrive I want you an – watch out!"

The screech of halted tires on hard pavement gave way to the sickening sound of crunching metal and breaking glass.
An old Toyota had come out of a back alley as the Mossad car had been slowing to turn. The Toyota's far side door flew open. The Mossad driver noticed in his side-view mirror a figure running up to the crash scene. He reached for his Uzi. He was not fast enough.

The men from
Mossad never heard a sound as the bullets ripped into the car. Glass and bone shattered in unison. Flesh exploded, blood following on its heels. The killers emptied the thirty-round magazines of their M-16 rifles. The crossfire had been delivered with professional accuracy.

Their target was dead; he lay slumped over the lap of a young
Mossad agent whose face was unrecognizable. The three Mossad men were necessary victims. They died without a clue to the true meaning and importance of the death of the man under their deficient protection.

The professional kil
lers were not quite finished. As their escape car pulled up, the man who had fired from behind the Mossad car calmly walked up to the rear opening where glass had been only moments before. He tossed in a grenade and ran around the corner where transportation awaited. The explosion was sharp, as sharp as the shrapnel it produced. The killers had done their job; there was now no chance of a miraculous recovery of Alexandr Govenin.

Robert Austin turned in his chair to face Jim Welch. His eyes had the gleam of triumph that Welch had long since grown to recognize instantly.

"Well," Austin paused to yawn and stretch. "It looks like it's all finished."

Jim Welch smiled. "Great. We can do a final review this afternoon and turn it in tomorrow morning."

"Sounds perfect."
Austin rose and headed for the door. "And now I'm going to get some lunch. Why don't you come along?"

"No thanks, I want to look over these sat-photos again." Welch was once again examining the satellite-produced photographs that provided such detail as to keep his keen eye well occupied.

Austin was quickly out the door and headed for the elevator. He would enjoy this lunch more than usual since the pressure of his report on the Grapevine was now finished. Experience told him that he would relish the feeling of satisfaction for a day or two and then be eager to begin a new project. A new challenge.

The elevator door opened.

"Hello, Robert.” The words came from a man in a three-piece suit, his elegant gray hair bordering on white. He looked like a man who shaped destiny, and he was. He was the deputy director of central intelligence.

"Bob?
" Austin didn't quite know how to react to the man in front of him. On Wall Street he had been wined and dined by many CEOs and Senior VPs, but nobody had ever made him as uncomfortable as this man did. "What brings you here? Don't tell me you've come to capitulate?" Austin forced a smile, but he knew that only something extraordinary would bring the Number Two man in the CIA to a DIA outpost where not even decisions were made.

Bob Oberheim laughed. “No, no. No capitulation today. In fact, I’m here to see you. Lunch?”

"I have the feeling I couldn't refuse you if I wanted to." Austin stepped into the elevator.

"Please, I'm in the CIA, not the Mafia.
I believe that you have never been to Langley." A statement.

"You're correct."

"Well, then, I'll be happy to give you a tour."

"Now?"

"Don't worry, I understand that you just finished your report on the SAM-17, so I'm sure you can afford the rest of the day off." Oberheim said this with a coolness that came only after decades of experience. He studied Austin's reactions intently.

"If I'm not mistaken, you have just informed me that you have my office wired."

"Rest assured, if we could, we would; however, your people are simply too good to allow us to succeed. You may not realize it, but you are the prize catch of the DIA and they're not about to let us or anyone else get hold of your words of wisdom without paying their price."

"And what would that be?"
Austin couldn't help responding to the flattery by smiling, although he fought it.

"Information.
We give them information they don't have and they give us things we don't have, such as your analyses.

"Tell me something,” Oberheim continued.
“You took a sixty percent pay cut to leave Wall Street and take this job. Why?"

"I thought I would enjoy it one hundred percent
more and so far I've been right. Now you tell me, what's the purpose of this? Do you want me to switch over to your team? I thought we were already on the same team, actually."

"
Well, we are on the same team. That said, I would, quite frankly, love to have you on my 'squad.' This is a competitive business we are in and I will take a great athlete whenever I can. However, we agreed long ago to keep our hands off. Indiscretion among the profession invites retaliation, you know. As for the purpose of our little excursion, that you will know soon enough."

Bob Oberheim had a deep respect for Austin, as he did for all who were the best in their field.
Austin’s reports were well read in the White House and demanded by senior advisors of President Reagan. Rumor was that even the man himself demanded a summary of Austin’s analyses when they came out.

Austin and the deputy director
had first met five years earlier, when Oberheim had tried his best to woo Austin into the CIA, only to lose out to the DIA. They had spoken on the phone once in the years since, but neither expected to see the other again. To Oberheim, Austin had aged but looked good, far less stressed than when he was on Wall Street. To Austin, Oberheim looked like the same tireless technician he had dined with years before. No aging, just an increase in intensity.

"So you see that most of what goes on here is just the same as what you do. Everyone here tends to carve out his own niche and then absorb himself in his particular microcosm. The less anyone bothers him the better he feels.” Oberheim had given Austin a mini-tour of Langley and was now walking into his office. "Please have a seat." Oberheim was very cordial.

Austin complied without saying anything.
He was struck by the utilitarian nature of Oberheim's office. Austin had the impression that this office could be deserted if not for the few photographs on the walls recalling what were undoubtedly happier days for the deputy director. One photograph showed Oberheim in a meeting with Nixon and Kissinger, while another had him in a meeting with General Westmoreland which apparently took place in Vietnam. Austin said nothing. Instead he waited to let Oberheim reveal his thoughts.

The
deputy director took a key from his pocket and unlocked his top drawer. He removed a manila envelope and pulled a photograph from it. "Please examine this photo, Robert, and tell me if you recognize him."

Austin knew the face immediately, but he could not come up with a name to match.
The photo showed an overweight and weary Soviet general in full dress walking across an arid plain. To Austin the photo looked as if it were taken on the moon, but he knew that the type of landscape he was viewing was common to the Caucasus region of the Soviet Union. "I don't know his name, but I would say that he commanded an Army in the Caucasus."

"Very good.
He was the commander of the Twelfth Red Guards Army based in Armenian SSR. His name is Fyodor Poltovsky. Yesterday he walked across the border into Turkey, came across a Turkish patrol and asked to see an American officer. This photograph was taken by a Turkish soldier." Austin reacted with surprise at the news. "Don't look so shocked. Unlike the impression that seems to be held by the press and the public alike, not every inch of the Soviet border is a Berlin Wall."

"I realize that, but it is still difficult to picture a Soviet general just walking across a stretch of no-man's land and merrily saying 'Take me to your leader' to the first soldier he happens to run across."

"Difficult perhaps, but true nonetheless." Oberheim reached into the manila envelope and pulled out another photograph which he handed to Austin. "Now this is something I know you won't recognize." Austin reviewed the photo. It was a missile, unlike any he had ever seen before. Oberheim continued. "That is the Soviet's newest tactical nuclear missile. We believe it is designed to carry a ten kiloton warhead and have a range of somewhere between one and two hundred kilometers, but there is no way to know since it has never been flight tested. That photo was shot by a satellite last month while the engine was being test fired. The Soviets think this particular satellite is dead so they went ahead with the test, even though we believe they waited twenty-four hours just to have a time when the sky above was empty of enemy satellites. Anyway, the connection here is that General Poltovsky attended the test firing at a Soviet research facility just outside of Tashkent and was given a tour of the operation while he was there."

"And you feel he has information beneficial to me. Correct?"

“Exactly. We also felt that you should be the one to interview him on this subject.” Oberheim sat back.

Austin replied with a smile. “So I’m to be an interrogator now? Well, I guess you would not have asked if you weren’t sure of the answer. Sure, I’ll do it. It will be rather exciting to interview a Soviet general.”

"We thought you would like it."

"You keep saying '
we.’ Who else did you consult on this?" Austin was hoping to hear that Oberheim had been talking with the head of the CI A or the secretary of state, or even the president.

"Your quote-unquote 'superiors' at the DIA.
”

Austin successfully covered h
is disappointment. "When will he be in the States?"

"Well, he's not coming here.
We want you to fly to Turkey to interview him. He's now at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. What do you think?"

Austin was stunned but delighted.
Why not visit an exotic country at Uncle Sam's expense? Anyway, if you're going to visit Turkey it's nice to visit in a capacity that guarantees that you won't be arrested or harassed by over-zealous policemen. "When would I leave?"

"Tomorrow at three-thirty on a C-5 out of Andrews." Oberheim anticipated Austin's next question.
"You will be back in six days."

Austin thought about his plans for the w
eekend, but he didn't have any. "All right, I'll do it."

"Good.
Now there is something I'm curious about. What in the name of God made you leave Wall Street, seriously?"

"Many reasons."
Austin treated the question as if it were any other business question. "As you know, my reputation in the financial world grew very quickly and in that sense I had achieved many of my goals, i.e. fame and wealth, very early. Well, at least wealth in the sense of a decent income. Unfortunately, that same reputation put a huge amount of pressure on me and I saw the DIA job as a way to cut that pressure, which it did, while still retaining a position in which my analyses had a real impact. As for the compensation, I'm not being paid too poorly now, even if it is a fraction of my past income. And the worst part of being on the Street is that as much as my pay went up, I found myself wanting even more. It is a treadmill that I didn’t want to stay on. The thing that really makes up for it is that I now have time after work to pursue other things, such as my personal investments, whereas before I literally did nothing but work, even when I was home. Trust me when I say I have no regrets." Oberheim believed him but he mentally noted that Austin never mentioned his wife.

Austin continued.
"Now you tell me, why did Poltovsky defect?"

Oberheim was now looking Austin straight in the eye, which did nothing to calm an already nervous weapons analyst.
Oberheim's eyes were a steel blue and seemed to Austin to have the ability to attack without mercy. They were the perfect complement to his face, which was rock hard and revealed nothing. Austin found himself shifting involuntarily in his seat. He was about to tell the deputy director to forget it when the reply came.

"He was a victim of a black operation."
A lie
. "Do you know what I mean by that?"

"Yes, I believe so.
It is when one of the opposition is forced to defect because it becomes the only viable option available."

"Exactly.
Let's say that his indiscretions became too big a cross to bear." Oberheim said it earnestly and followed it with no reaction. He was a master of deceit and he now claimed another victim. After all, Austin had no reason to doubt his words. How could he possibly realize that the disappearance of Vazhnevsky and the defection of Poltovsky were rooted in the same basic evil, an evil that frightened even the deputy director.

Austin would now be a pawn, one of several being used by the brightest minds at Langley in a desperate attempt to pry from Poltovsky that which no one braved to speak openly.

"Tell me something, Robert, do you know your social security number by heart?"

Austin was
surprised by this most unusual question. He blurted out the obvious answer while controlling the nervous smile that forced its way to his lips. "Of course."

Oberheim pulled a business card from his desk drawer and offered it to Austin, who examined it with child-like curiosity. It was the card of a Turkish merchant written in both Turk and English.
In the center below the description of the merchant's trade as "Import and Export Specialists" was a phone number, but no address could be found.

"You will note the phone number.
If you get into any type of trouble while in Turkey you must add your social security number to that number and then remove the three left-hand digits to get a phone number you can call in Ankara. If you find it necessary to make such a call, immediately identify yourself as the 'Harbinger' and briefly state your problem. The man you will be talking to is a top CIA field officer. Remember that this number is to be used in an emergency only." Oberheim had set up this back-up system out of genuine concern for such a valuable asset as Austin.

Oberheim's
choice for this assignment was easy, for Austin's fame was well known among Soviet intelligence and that fact was necessary for the psychological ploy designed to bring the truth out of Poltovsky. "I suggest that you memorize the phone number on the card in case you lose it."

Austin was speechless.
He had long read and dreamed about the cloak-and-dagger world of international espionage, but now he would live it. Only hours before he had been happy and content with a life fraught with repetition and similarity. Now a new world was opened up, even if only briefly. Austin felt like a child on Christmas Eve. A plethora of presents awaited.
Will I be disappointed? Delighted? Indifferent? Time. Now I must wait. Time will reveal all.

"One final thing
, Robert." Oberheim's words became solemn, though they retained their drill sergeant character. "You enjoy a high security clearance. All that we have discussed is top secret. You must tell your wife and your companions at Alpha Golf that you are travelling to Turkey to view an arms exhibition. Nobody can know of Poltovsky's defection. That is paramount."

"I understand."