Henderson found a booth in the back. The waiter, probably an illegal Mexican who comically tried to mask his accent as Italian, lit the candle on the table with a match and went off for the gin-and-tonic the new customer wanted.
Marvin arrived a few minutes later, dressed casually and carrying the evening paper, which he set on the table. He was of Henderson’s age, totally nondescript, not tall or short, portly or thin, his hair a neutral brown and of medium length, wearing glasses that might or might not have held prescription lenses. He wore a blue short-sleeve shirt without a tie, and looked like just another local resident who didn’t feel like doing his own dinner tonight.
‘The Senators lost again,’ he said when the waiter arrived with Henderson’s drink. ‘The house red for me,’ Marvin told the Mexican.
‘Si,’ the waiter said and moved off.
Marvin had to be an illegal, Peter thought, appraising the man. As a staffer for a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Henderson had been briefed in by serious members of the FBI’s Intelligence Division. ‘Legal’ KGB officers had diplomatic covers, and if caught could only be PNG’d – declared persona non grata – and sent home. So they were secure from serious mishandling on the part of the American government, which was the good news; the bad news was that they were also more easily tracked, since their residences and automobiles were known. Illegals were just that, Soviet intelligence officers who came into the country with false papers and who if caught would end up in federal prison until the next exchange, which could take years. Those facts explained Marvin’s superb English. Any mistake he made would have serious consequences. That made his relaxed demeanor all the more remarkable.
‘Baseball fan, eh?’
‘I learned the game long ago. I was a pretty good shortstop, but I never learned to hit a curve ball.’ The man grinned. Henderson smiled back. He’d seen satellite imagery of the very place where Marvin had learned his trade, that interesting little city northwest of Moscow.
‘How will it work?’
‘I like that. Good, Let’s get down to business. We won’t be doing this very often. You know why.’
Another smile. ‘Yeah, they say that winters at Leavenworth are a motherfucker.’
‘Not a laughing matter, Peter,’ the KGB officer said. ‘This is a very serious business.’ Please, not another bloody cowboy, Marvin thought to himself.
‘I know. Sorry,’ Henderson apologized. ‘I’m new to this.’
‘First of all, we need to set up a way of contacting me. Your apartment has curtains on the front windows. When they are all the way open, or all the way closed, there is nothing to concern us. When there is, leave them halfway closed. I will check your windows twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday mornings, about nine. Is that acceptable?’
‘Yes, Marvin.’
‘For starters? Peter, we’ll use a simple transfer method. I will park my car on a street close to your home. It’s a dark-blue Plymouth Satellite with license number HVR-309. Repeat that back to me. Don’t ever write it down.’
‘HVR-309.’
‘Put your messages in this.’ He passed something under the table. It was small and metallic. ‘Don’t get it too close to your watch. There’s a powerful magnet in it. When you walk past my car, you can bend down to pick up a piece of litter, or rest your foot on the bumper and tie your shoe. Just stick the container on the inside surface of the bumper. The magnet will hold it in place.’
It seemed very sophisticated to Henderson, though everything he’d just heard was kindergarten-level spy-craft. This was good for the summer. Winter weather would require something else. The dinner menu arrived, and both men selected veal.
‘I have something now if you’re interested,’ Henderson told the KGB officer. Might as well let them know how important I am.
Marvin, whose real name was Ivan Alekseyevich Yegorov, had a real job, and everything that went along with it. Employed by the Aetna Casualty and Surety Company as a loss-control representative, he’d been through company training on Farmington Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut, before returning to the Washington regional office, and his job was to identify safety hazards at the many clients of the company, known in the trade as ‘risks.’ Selected mainly for its mobility – the post even came with a company car – the job carried with it the unexpected bonus of visiting the offices of various government contractors whose employees were not always as careful covering up the papers on their desks as they ought to have been. His immediate boss was delighted with Marvin’s performance. His new man was highly observant and downright superb at documenting his business affairs. He’d already turned down promotion and transfer to Detroit – sorry, boss, but I just like the Washington area too much – which didn’t bother his supervisor at all. A guy with his skills, holding a fairly low-paying job, just made his part of the office look all the better. For Marvin, the job meant being out of the office four days out of five, which allowed him to meet people whenever and wherever he wished, along with a free car – Aetna even paid gas and maintenance – and a life so comfortable that had he believed in God he might have thought himself dead and in heaven. A genuine love for baseball took him to RFK Stadium, where the anonymity of the crowd was as perfect a place for brush-passes and other meets as the KGB Field Operations Manual dared to hope for. All in all, Captain Yegorov was a man on the way up, comfortable with his cover and his surroundings, doing his duty for his country. He’d even managed to arrive in America just in time to catch the sexual revolution. All he really missed was the vodka, something Americans did poorly.
Isn’t this interesting? Marvin asked himself in his Chevy Chase apartment. It was downright hilarious that he had learned about a high-level Russian intelligence operation from an American, and here was a chance to hurt his country’s Main Enemy through surrogates – if they could get things moving in time. He would also be able to inform his control officers of something the Soviet Air Force cretins had running that had significant implications for the Soviet Union’s defense. They’d probably try to take that operation over. You couldn’t trust pilots – it had to be a PVO Strany officer doing the questioning, he was sure – with something as important as national defense. He made his notes, photographed them, and rewound the film into the tiny cassette. His first appointment tomorrow was an early call at a local contractor. From there he would stop off to have breakfast at a Howard Johnson’s, where he’d make his transfer. The cassette would be in Moscow in two days, maybe three, by diplomatic pouch.
Captain Yegorov ended his work for the evening just in time to catch the end of the Senators game – despite a ninth-inning homer by Frank Howard they fell short again, losing to Cleveland 5-3. Wasn’t this something, he thought, sipping at his beer. Henderson was a plum all by himself, and nobody had bothered to tell him – probably hadn’t known – that he had his own source within the White House Office of National Security Affairs. Wasn’t that a kick in the ass?
Mission stress and all, it was a relief when the C-141 thumped down at Danang. They’d been in transit for a total of twenty-three noisy and mind-numbing hours, and that was quite long enough, they all thought, until reality struck them hard and fast. Scarcely had the cargo hatch opened when the smell hit them. It was what all veterans of this place came to think of as the Smell of Vietnam. The contents of various latrines were dumped into barrels and burned with diesel fuel.
‘Smell o’ home!’ one Marine joked, badly, evoking isolated barks of semiamusement.
‘Saddle up!’ Irvin shouted as the engine noise died. It took a little time. Reactions were slowed by fatigue and stiffness. Many shook their heads to clear off the dizziness induced by the earplugs, along with yawns and stretches which psychologists would have called typical nonverbal expressions of unease.
The flight crew came aft just as the Marines left. Captain Albie went to them, thanking them for the ride, which had been smooth, if long. The Air Force crew looked forward to several days of enforced crew-rest after the marathon stint, not yet knowing that they would hold in this area until the team was ready to fly home, perhaps catching a few cargo hops back and forth to Clark. Then Albie led his men off the aircraft. Two trucks were waiting, and they drove to a different part of the air base, where two aircraft waited. These were Navy C-2A Greyhounds. With a few desultory moans, the Marines selected seats for the next part of their journey, a one-hour hop to USS Constellation. Once there, they boarded a pair of CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters for a transfer to USS Ogden, where, disoriented and exhausted by travel, they were led to capacious and empty troop quarters – and bunks. Kelly watched them file off, wondering what came next for him.