“But someone at the CIA might not care what the president thinks.”
“Not in my department! It would be my head. Do you really mink we could run an operation like this and then successfully conceal it? Hell, Senator, I wish we could.”
“Why the Poles, and why are they able to do it?”
“We’ve been hearing for some time about a dissident faction inside their intelligence community, one that does not especially love the Soviets. You can pick any number of reasons why. There’s the fundamental historical enmity, and the Russians seem to forget that the Poles are Polish first, Communists second. My own guess is that it’s this business with the pope, even more than the martial law thing. We know that our old friend Andropov initiated a replay of the Henry II/Becket business. The pope has given Poland a great deal of prestige, done things for the country that even Party members feel good about. Ivan went and spit on their whole country when he did that — you wonder that they’re mad? As to their ability, people seem to overlook just what a class act their intelligence service always has been. They’re the ones who made the Enigma breakthrough in 1939, not the Brits. They’re damned effective, and for the same reason as the Israelis. They have enemies to the east and the west. That sort of thing breeds good agents. We know for certain that they have a lot of people inside Russia, guest workers paying Narmonov off for the economic supports given to their country. We also know that a lot of Polish engineers are working in Soviet shipyards. I admit it’s funny, neither country has much of a maritime tradition, but the Poles build a lot of Soviet merchant hulls. Their yards are more efficient than the Russian ones, and lately they’ve been giving technical help, mainly in quality control, to the naval building yards.”
“So, the Polish intelligence service has played a trick on the Soviets,” Donaldson summarized. “Gorshkov is one of the guys who took a hard line on intervention, wasn’t he?”
“True, but he’s probably just a target of opportunity. The real aim of this has to be to embarrass Moscow. The fact that this operation attacks the Soviet Navy has no significance in itself. The objective is to raise hell in their senior military channels, and they all come together in Moscow. God, I wish I knew what was really happening! From the five percent we do know, this operation has to be a real masterpiece, the sort of thing legends are made of. We’re working on it, trying to find out. So are the Brits, and the French, and the Israelis — Benny Herzog of the Mossad is supposed to be going ape. The Israelis do pull this kind of trick on their neighbors, regularly. They say officially that they don’t know anything beyond what they’ve told us. Maybe so. Or maybe they gave the Poles some technical help — hard to say. It’s certain that the Soviet Navy is a strategic threat to Israel. But we need more time on that. The Israeli connection looks a little too pat at this point.”
“But you don’t know what’s happening, just the how and why.”
“Senator, it’s not that easy. Give us some time. At the moment we may not even want to know. To summarize, somebody has laid a colossal piece of disinformation on the Soviet Navy. It was probably aimed at merely shaking them up, but it has clearly gotten out of hand. How or why it happened, we do not know. You can bet, however, that whoever initiated this operation is working very hard to cover his tracks.” Ritter wanted the senator to get this right. “If the Soviets find out who did it, their reaction will be nasty — depend on it. In a few weeks we might know more. The Israelis owe us for a few things, and eventually they’ll let us in on it.”
“For a couple more F-15s and a company of tanks,” Donaldson observed.
“Cheap at the price.”
“But if we’re not involved in this, why the secrecy?”
“You gave me your word, Senator,” Ritter reminded him. “For one thing, if word leaked out, would the Soviets believe we’re not involved? Not likely! We’re trying to civilize the intelligence game. I mean, we’re still enemies, but having the various intelligence services in conflict uses up too many assets, and it’s dangerous to both sides. For another, well, if we ever do find out how all this happened, we just might want to make use of it ourselves.”
“Those reasons are contraditory.”
Ritter smiled. “The intelligence game is like that. If we find out who did this, we can use that information to our advantage. In any case, Senator, you gave me your word, and I will report that to the president on my return to Langley.”
“Very well.” Donaldson rose. The interview was at an end. “I trust you will keep us informed of future developments.”
“That’s what we have to do, sir.” Ritter stood.
“Indeed. Thank you for coming down.” They did not shake hands this time either.
Ritter walked into the hall without passing through the anteroom. He stopped to look down into the atrium of the Hart building. It reminded him of the local Hyatt. Uncharacteristically, he took the stairs instead of the elevator down to the first floor. With luck he had just settled a major score. His car was waiting for him outside, and he told the driver to head for the FBI building.
“Not a CIA operation?” Peter Henderson, the senator’s chief aide, asked.
“No, I believe him,” Donaldson said. “He’s not smart enough to pull something like that.”
“I don’t know why the president doesn’t get rid of him,” Henderson commented. “Of course, the kind of person he is, maybe it’s better that he’s incompetent.” The senator agreed.
When he returned to his office, Henderson adjusted the Venetian blinds on his window, though the sun was on the other side of the building. An hour later the driver of a passing Black & White taxicab looked up at the window and made a mental note.
Henderson worked late that night. The Hart building was nearly empty with most of the senators out of town. Donaldson was there only because of personal business and to keep an eye on things. As chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, he had more duties than he would have liked at this time of year. Henderson took the elevator down to the main lobby, looking every inch the senior congressional aide — a three-piece gray suit, an expensive leather attaché case, his hair just so, and his stride jaunty as he left the building. A Black & White cab came around the corner and stopped to let out a fare. Henderson got in.
“Watergate,” he said. Not until the taxi had driven a few blocks did he speak again.
Henderson had a modest one-bedroom condo in the Watergate complex, an irony that he himself had considered many times. When he got to his destination he did not tip the driver. A woman got in as he walked to the main entrance. Taxis in Washington are very busy in the early evening.
“Georgetown University, please,” she said, a pretty young woman with auburn hair and an armload of books.
“Night school?” the driver asked, checking the mirror.
“Exams,” the girl said, her voice a trace uneasy. “Psych.”
“Best thing to do with exams is relax,” the driver advised.
Special Agent Hazel Loomis fumbled with her books. Her purse dropped to the floor. “Oh, damn.” She bent over to pick it up, and while doing so retrieved a miniature tape recorder that another agent had left under the driver’s seat.
It took fifteen minutes to get to the university. The fare was $3.85. Loomis gave the driver a five and told him to keep the change. She walked across the campus and entered a Ford which drove straight to the J. Edgar Hoover Building. A lot of work had gone into this — and it had been so easy!
“Always is, when the bear walks into your sight.” The inspector who had been running the case turned left onto Pennsylvania Avenue. “The problem is finding the damned bear in the first place.”
The Pentagon
“Gentlemen, you have been asked here because each of you is a career intelligence officer with a working knowledge of submarines and Russian,” Davenport said to the four officers seated in his office. “I have need of officers with your qualifications. This is a volunteer assignment. It could involve a considerable element of danger — we cannot be sure at this point. The only other thing I can say is that this will be a dream job for an intelligence officer — but the sort of dream that you’ll never be able to tell anyone about. We’re all used to that, aren’t we?”