“So, to this point, we have three confessed document couriers, and one more positively identified, but unfortunately dead. The dead one was seen in close physical proximity to the senior aide of the Defense Minister, and one of the live ones has identified his contact as a foreigner, but cannot positively identify his face. In short, we have the middle of this line, but neither end.”
“That is correct, Comrade Chairman. Surveillance of the two Ministry colonels continues. I propose that we step up surveillance of the American Embassy community.”
Gerasimov nodded. “Approved. It’s time for my morning brief. Keep pushing for a break in the case. You look better now that you’ve cut back on your drinking, Vatutin.”
“I feel better, Comrade Chairman,” he admitted.
“Good.” Gerasimov rose, and his visitor did the same. “Do you really think that our CIA colleagues killed their own man?”
“Altunin’s death was most convenient for them. I realize that this would be a violation of our—our agreement along these lines, but—”
“But we are probably dealing with a highly placed spy, and they are undoubtedly most interested in protecting him. Yes, I understand that. Keep pushing, Vatutin,” Gerasimov said again.
Foley was already at his office also. On his desk were three film cassettes for CARDINAL. The next problem was delivering the damned things. The business of espionage was a mass of interlocking contradictions. Some parts of it were devilishly hard. Some carried the sort of danger that made him wish he’d stayed with the New York Times. But others were so simple that he could have had one of his kids handle it. That very thought had occurred to him several times—not that he’d ever entertain it seriously, but in moments when his mind was affected by a few stiff drinks, he’d muse that Eddie could take a piece of chalk and make a certain mark in a certain place. From time to time, embassy personnel would walk about Moscow doing things that were just slightly out of the ordinary. In summer, they’d wear flowers in buttonholes, and remove them for no apparent reason—and the KGB officers watching them would anxiously scan the sidewalks for the person at whom the “signal” was aimed. Year round, some would wander about, taking photographs of ordinary street scenes. In fact, they scarcely needed to be told. Some of the embassy people merely had to act like their eccentric American selves to drive the Russians nuts. To a counterespionage officer, anything could be a secret sign: a turned-down sun visor in a parked car, a package left on its front seat, the way the wheels were pointed. The net effect of all these measures, some deliberate, some merely random, had “Two” men scurrying all over the city running down things that simply didn’t exist. It was something Americans did better than Russians, who were too regimented to act in a truly random fashion, and it was something that made life thoroughly miserable for the counterspies of the Second Chief Directorate.
But there were thousands of them, and only seven hundred Americans (counting dependents) assigned to the embassy.
And Foley still had the film to deliver. He wondered why it was that CARDINAL had always refused to use dead-drops. It was the perfect expedient for this. A dead-drop was typically an object that looked like an ordinary stone, or anything else common and harmless, hollowed out to hold the thing to be transferred. Bricks were especially favored in Moscow, as the city was mainly one of brick, many of which were loose due to the uniformly poor workmanship found here, but the variety of such devices was endless.
On the other hand, the variety of ways to make a brush-pass was limited, and depended upon the sort of timing to be found in a wishbone backfield. Well, the Agency hadn’t given him this job because it was easy. He couldn’t risk it again himself. Perhaps his wife could make the transfer . . .
“So, where’s the leak?” Parks asked his security chief.
“It could be any one of a hundred or so people,” the man answered,
“That’s good news,” Pete Wexton observed dryly. He was an inspector in the FBI’s counterintelligence office. “Only a hundred.”
“Could be one of the scientific people, or somebody’s secretary, or someone in the budget department—that’s just in the program itself. There are another twenty or so here in the D.C. area who’re into Tea Clipper deep enough to have seen this stuff, but they’re all very senior folks.” SDIO’s security chief was a Navy captain who customarily wore civilian clothes. “More likely, the person we’re looking for is out West.”
“And they’re mostly scientific types, mostly under forty.” Wexton closed his eyes. Who live inside computers and think the world’s just one big videogame. The problem with scientists, especially the young ones, was simply that they lived in a world very different from that understood and appreciated by the security community. To them, progress depended on the free transfer of information and ideas. They were people who got excited about new things, and talked about them among themselves, unconsciously seeking the synergism that made ideas sprout like weeds in the disordered garden of the laboratory. To a security officer the ideal world was one where nobody talked to anyone else. The problem with that, of course, was that such a world rarely did anything worth securing in the first place. The balance was almost impossible to strike, and the security people were always caught exactly in the middle, hated by everyone.
“What about internal security on the project documents?” Wexton asked.
“You mean canary traps?”
“What the hell is that?” General Parks asked.
“All these papers are done on word processors. You use the machine to make subtle alterations in each copy of the important papers. That way you can track every one, and identify the precise one that’s being leaked to the other side,” the Captain explained. “We haven’t done much of that. It’s too time-intensive.”
“CIA has a computer subroutine that does it automatically. They call it Spookscribe, or something like that. It’s closely held, but you should be able to get it if you ask.”
“Nice of ’em to tell us about it,” Parks groused. “Would it matter in this case?”
“Not at the moment, but you play all the cards you got,” the Captain observed to his boss. “I’ve heard about the program. It can’t be used on scientific documents. The way they use language is too precise. Anything more than inserting a comma—well, it can screw up what they’re trying to say.”
“Assuming anyone can understand it in the first place,” Wexton said with a rueful shake of the head. “Well, it’s for damned sure that the Russians can.” He was already thinking about the resources that this case would require—possibly hundreds of agents. They’d be conspicuous. The community in question might be too small to absorb a large influx of people without someone’s notice.
The other obvious thing to do was restrict access to information on the mirror experiments, but then you ran the risk of alerting the spy. Wexton wondered why he hadn’t stuck to simple things like kidnappings and Mafia racketeering. But he’d gotten his brief on Tea Clipper from Parks himself. It was an important job, and he was the best man for it. Wexton was sure of this: Director Jacobs had said so himself.
Bondarenko noticed it first. He’d had an odd feeling a few days previously while doing his morning run. It was something he’d always had, but those three months in Afghanistan had taken a latent sixth sense and made it blossom fully. There were eyes on him. Whose? he wondered.
They were good. He was sure of that. He also suspected that there were five or more of them. That made them Russian . . . probably. Not certainly. Colonel Bondarenko was one kilometer into his run, and decided to perform a small experiment. He altered his route, taking a right where he normally took a left. That would take him past a new apartment block whose first-floor windows were still polished. He grinned to himself, but his right hand unconsciously slapped down on his hip, searching for his service automatic. The grin ended when he realized what his hand had done, and felt the gnawing disappointment that he did not have the wherewithal to defend himself with anything other than bare hands. Bondarenko knew how to do that quite well, but a pistol has longer reach than a hand or foot. It wasn’t fear, not even close to it, but Bondarenko was a soldier, accustomed to knowing the limits and rules of his own world.
His head swiveled, looking at the reflection of the windows. There was a man a hundred meters behind him, holding a hand to his face, as though speaking on a small radio. Interesting. Bondarenko turned and ran backward for a few meters, but by the time his head had come around, the man’s hand was at his side, and he was walking normally, seemingly uninterested in the jogging officer. Colonel Bondarenko turned and resumed his normal pace. His smile was now thin and tight. He’d confirmed it. But what had he confirmed? Bondarenko promised himself that he’d know that an hour after getting to his office.