“It’s open.” Back in Moscow, Foley looked up when the knock came at the door. The courier stepped in.
“The plane leaves in an hour. I have to hustle.”
Foley reached into his desk and pulled out what looked like an expensive silver cigarette case. He handed it over, and the courier handled it carefully before tucking it into his breast pocket. The typed pages were folded inside, along with a tiny pyrotechnic charge. If the case were improperly opened, or subjected to a sudden acceleration—like being dropped to a hard floor—the charge would go off and destroy the flash paper inside. It might also set fire to the courier’s suit, which explained his care in handling it.
“I should be back Tuesday morning. Anything I can get you, Mr. Foley?”
“I hear there’s a new Far Side book out . . .” That got a laugh.
“Okay, I’ll check. You can pay me when I get back.”
“Safe trip, Augie.”
One of the embassy’s drivers took Augie Giannini to Sheremetyevo Airport, nineteen miles outside of Moscow, where the courier’s diplomatic passport enabled him to walk past the security checkpoints and right onto the British Airways plane bound for Heathrow Airport. He rode in the coach section, on the right side of the aircraft. The diplomatic pouch had the window seat, with Giannini in the middle. Flights out of Moscow were rarely crowded, and the seat on his left was also vacant. The Boeing started rolling on schedule. The Captain announced the time of flight and destination, and the airliner started moving down the runway. The moment it lifted off Soviet soil, as often happened, the hundred and fifty passengers applauded. It was something that always amused the courier. Giannini pulled a paperback from his pocket and started reading. He couldn’t drink on the flight, of course, nor sleep, and he decided to wait for dinner until his next flight. The stewardess did manage to get a cup of coffee into him, however.
Three hours later, the 747 thumped down at Heathrow. Again he was able to clear customs perfunctorily. A man who spent more time in the air than most commercial pilots, he had access to the first-class waiting rooms still allowed in most of the world’s airports. Here he waited an hour for a 747 bound for Washington’s Dulles International.
Over the Atlantic, the courier enjoyed a Pan Am dinner, and a movie that he hadn’t seen before, which happened rarely enough. By the time he’d finished his book, the plane was swooping into Dulles. The courier ran his hand over his face and tried to remember what time it was supposed to be in Washington. Fifteen minutes later he climbed into a nondescript government Ford that headed southeast. He got into the front seat because he wanted the extra leg room.
“How was the flight?” the driver asked.
“Same as always: borrr-inggg.” On the other hand, it beat flying medivac missions in the Central Highlands. The government was paying him twenty grand a year to sit on airplanes and read books, which, combined with his retirement pay from the Army, gave him a fairly comfortable life. He never bothered himself wondering what he carried in the diplomatic bag, or in this metal case in his coat. He figured it was all a waste of time anyway. The world didn’t change very much.
“Got the case?” the man in the back asked.
“Yeah.” Giannini took it from his inside pocket and handed it back, with both hands. The CIA officer in the back took it, using both hands, and tucked it inside a foam-lined box. The officer was an instructor in the CIA’s Office of Technical Services, part of the Directorate of Science and Technology. It was an office that covered a lot of bureaucratic ground. This particular officer was an expert on booby traps and explosive devices in general. At Langley, he took the elevator to Ritter’s office and opened the cigarette case on the latter’s desk, then returned to his own office without looking at the contents.
Ritter walked to his personal Xerox machine and made several copies of the flash-paper pages, which were then burned. It was not so much a security measure as a simple safety precaution. Ritter didn’t want a sheaf of highly flammable material in his personal office. He started reading the pages even before all the copies were done. As usual, his head started moving left and right by the end of the first paragraph. The Deputy Director for Operations walked to his desk and punched the line to the Director’s office. “You busy? The bird landed.”
“Come on over,” Judge Arthur Moore replied at once. Nothing was more important than data from CARDINAL.
Ritter collected Admiral Greer on the way, and the two of them joined the Director of Central Intelligence in his spacious office.
“You gotta love this guy,” Ritter said as he handed the papers out. “He’s conned Yazov into sending a colonel into Bach to do a ‘reliability assessment’ of the whole system. This Colonel Bondarenko is supposed to report back on how everything works, in layman’s terms, so that the Minister can understand it all and report to the Politburo. Naturally, he detailed Misha to play gofer, so the report goes across his desk first.”
“That kid Ryan met—Gregory, I think—wanted us to get a man into Dushanbe,” Greer noted with a chuckle. “Ryan told him it was impossible.”
“Good,” Ritter observed. “Everybody knows what screw-ups the Operations Directorate is.” The entire CIA took perverse pride in the fact that only its failure made the news. The Directorate of Operations in particular craved the public assessment that the press constantly awarded them. The foul-ups of the KGB never got the attention that CIA’s did, and the public image, so often reinforced, was widely believed even in the Russian intelligence community. It rarely occurred to anyone that the leaks were purposeful.
“I wish,” Judge Moore observed soberly, “that somebody would explain to Misha that there are old spies and bold spies, but very few old and bold ones.”
“He’s a very careful man, boss,” Ritter pointed out.
“Yeah, I know.” The DCI looked down at the pages.
Since the death of Dmitri Fedorovich, it is not the same at the Defense Ministry, the DCI read. Sometimes I wonder if Marshal Yazov takes these new technological developments seriously enough, but to whom can I report my misgivings? Would KGB believe me? I must order my thoughts. Yes, I must organize my thoughts before I make any accusations. But can I break security rules . . .
But what choice do I have? If I cannot document my misgivings, who will take me seriously? It is a hard thing to have to break an important rule of security, but the safety of the State supersedes such rules. It must.
As the epic poems of Homer began with the invocation of the Muse, so CARDINAL’s messages invariably began like this. The idea had developed in the late 1960s. CARDINAL’s messages began as photographs of his personal diary. Russians are inveterate diarists. Each time he began one, it would be as a Slavic cri de coeur, his personal worries about the policy decisions made in the Defense Ministry, Sometimes he would express concern with the security on a specific project or the performance of a new tank or aircraft. In each case, the technical merits of a piece of hardware or a policy decision would be examined at length, but always the focus of the document would be a supposed bureaucratic problem within the Ministry. If Filitov’s apartment were ever searched, his diary would be easily found, certainly not hidden away as a spy was expected to do, and while he was definitely breaking rules of security, and would certainly be admonished for it, there would at least be a chance that Misha could successfully defend himself. Or, that was the idea.
When I have Bondarenko’s report, in another week or two, perhaps I can persuade the Minister that this project is one of truly vital importance to the Motherland, it ended.
“So, it looks like they made a breakthrough on laser power output,” Ritter said.
” ‘Throughput’ is the current term,” Greer corrected. “At least that’s what Jack tells me. This is not very good news, gentlemen.”
“Your usual keen eye for detail, James,” Ritter said. “God, what if they get there first?”
“It’s not the end of the world. Remember that it’ll take ten years to deploy the system even after the concept is validated, and they haven’t come close to doing that yet,” the DCI pointed out. “The sky is not falling. This could even work to our benefit, couldn’t it, James?”
“If Misha can get us a usable description of their breakthrough, yes. In most areas we’re further along than they are,” the DDI replied. “Ryan will need this for his report.”
“He’s not cleared for this!” Ritter objected.