The Deceiver (28 page)

Keepsake had already given McCready the name of every real Soviet agent in Britain that he knew about, which was most of them. The British had clearly not picked them all up—that would have given the game away. Some had been shifted away from classified material, not in an obvious manner but slowly, in the course of “administrative” changes. Some had been promoted in rank but been moved out of the handling of secret matters. Some had had the material crossing their desks doctored so that it would do more harm than good.

Keepsake had even been allowed to recruit a few new agents to prove his worth to Moscow. One of these was a clerk in the Central Registry of the SIS itself, a man utterly loyal to Britain but who would pass on what he was told. Moscow had been quite delighted by the recruitment of Agent Wolverine. It was agreed that two days later, Wolverine would pass to Keepsake a copy of a draft memorandum in Denis Gaunt’s hand to the effect that Orlov was now ensconced at Alconbury, where the Americans had fallen for him hook, line, and sinker—and so had the British.

“How are things with Orlov?” inquired Keepsake.

“Everything has gone quiet,” said McCready. “I had one half-day with him, got nowhere. I think I sowed some seeds of doubt in Joe Roth’s mind, there and in London. He went back to Alconbury, talked again with Orlov, then shot off back to the States on a different passport. He thought we hadn’t spotted him. Seemed in a hell of a hurry. Hasn’t reappeared—at least, not through a regular airport. May have flown direct into Alconbury on a military flight.”

Keepsake stopped tossing crumbs to the ducks and turned to McCready. “They have talked to you since, invited you back to resume?”

“No. It’s been a week. Total silence.”

“Then he has produced the Big Lie, the one he came to produce. That is why the CIA is involved within themselves.”

“Any idea what it could be?”

Keepsake sighed. “If I were General Drozdov, I would think like a KGB man. There are two things the KGB has always lusted after. One is to start a major war between the CIA and the SIS. Have they started fighting you?”

“No, they are being very polite. Just noncommunicative.”

“Then it is the other. The other dream is to tear the CIA apart from the inside. Destroy its morale. Set colleague against colleague. Orlov will denounce someone as a KGB agent inside the CIA. It will be an effective accusation. I warned you; Potemkin is a long-planned affair.”

“How will we spot him if they don’t tell us?”

Keepsake began to stroll back to his car. He turned and called over his shoulder, “Look for the man to whom the CIA suddenly grows cold. That will be the man, and he will be innocent.”

Edwards was aghast.

“Let Moscow know that Orlov is now based at Alconbury? If Langley ever finds out, there’ll be a war. Why in heaven’s name do that?”

“A test. I believe in Keepsake. I’m convinced he’s genuine. I trust him. So I think Orlov is phony. If Moscow does not react, makes no attempt to harm Orlov, that will be the proof. Even the Americans will believe that. They’ll be angry, of course, but they’ll see the logic.”

“And if by any chance they attack and kill Orlov? You’re going to be the one to tell Calvin Bailey?”

“They won’t,” said McCready. “As night follows day, they won’t.”

“By the way, he’s coming here. On vacation.”

“Who?”

“Calvin. With wife and daughter. There’s a file on your desk. I’d like the Firm to offer him some hospitality. A couple of dinners with people he’d like to meet. He’s been a good friend of Britain over the years. Least we can do.”

Glumly, McCready stumped downstairs and looked at the file. Denis Gaunt sat opposite him.

“He’s an opera buff,” said McCready, reading from the file. “I suppose we can get him tickets for Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, that sort of thing.”

“Jesus, I can’t get into Glyndebourne,” said Gaunt enviously. “There’s a seven-year waiting list.”

The magnificent country mansion in the heart of Sussex, set amid rolling lawns and containing one of the country’s finest opera houses, was and remains a most sought-after treat for any opera lover on a summer’s evening.

“You like opera?” asked McCready.

“Sure.”

“Fine. You can mother-hen Calvin and Mrs. Bailey while they’re here. Get tickets for the Garden and Glyndebourne. Use Timothy’s name. Pull rank, swing it. This miserable job must have some perks, though I’m damned if I ever get any.”

He headed for lunch. Gaunt grabbed the file.

“When’s he due?” he asked.

“In a week,” called McCready from the door. “Call him up. Tell him what you’re fixing. Ask what his favorites are. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it right.”

Max Kellogg shut himself inside the archives and lived there for ten days. His wife in Alexandria was told he was out of town and believed it. Kellogg had his food sent in, but he mainly survived on a diet of coffee and too many filter kings.

Two archive clerks were at his personal disposal. They knew nothing of his investigation but simply brought him the files he wanted, one after the other. Photographs were dug out of files long buried as being of little further use or relevance. Like all covert agencies, the CIA never threw anything away, however obscure or outdated; one never knew whether someday that tiny detail, that fragment of newsprint or photograph, might be needed. Many were needed now.

Halfway through his investigation, two agents were dispatched to Europe. One visited Vienna and Frankfurt; the other, Stockholm and Helsinki. Each carried identification as an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration and a personal letter from the Secretary of the Treasury asking for the cooperation of a major bank in each city. Aghast at the thought that it was being used to launder drug money, each bank conferred among its directors and opened its files.

Tellers were summoned from their desks and shown a photograph. Dates and bank accounts were quoted. One teller could not remember; the other three nodded. The agents took receipt of photocopies of accounts, sums deposited, transfers made. They took away samples of signatures in a variety of names for graphology analysis back at Langley. When they had what they came for, they returned to Washington and put their trophies on the desk of Max Kellogg.

From an original group of more than twenty CIA officers who had served in Vietnam in the relevant period—and Kellogg had expanded the time frame to include a period of two years on either side of the dates quoted by Orlov—the first dozen were quickly eliminated. One by one, the others went out of the frame.

Either they were not in the right city at the right time, or they could not have divulged a certain piece of information because they never knew it, or they could not have made a certain rendezvous because they were on the other side of the world. Except one.

Before the agents arrived back from Europe, Kellogg knew he had his man. The evidence from the banks merely confirmed it. When he was ready, when he had it all, he went back to the house of the DCI in Georgetown.

Three days before he went, Calvin and Mrs. Bailey with their daughter, Clara, flew from Washington to London. Bailey loved London; in fact, he was a staunch anglophile. It was the history of the place that enthused him.

He loved to visit the old castles and stately mansions built in a bygone era, to wander the cool cloisters of ancient abbeys and seats of learning. He installed himself in a Mayfair apartment that the CIA retained for the housing of visiting VIPs, rented a car, and went to Oxford, avoiding the motorway and meandering instead through the byways, taking lunch in the sun at The Bull at Bisham, whose oak beams were set before Queen Elizabeth I was born.

On his second evening, Joe Roth stopped by for a drink. For the first time he met the remarkably plain Mrs. Bailey and Clara, a gawky child of eight with straight plaits of ginger hair, eyeglasses, and buck teeth. He had never met the Bailey family before; his superior was not the sort of man one associated with bedtime stories and barbecues on the lawn. But the frostiness of Calvin Bailey seemed to have mellowed, though whether it was the fact of enjoying an extended vacation among the operas, concerts, and art galleries that he so admired, or the prospect of promotion, Roth could not tell.

He wanted to tell Bailey of the strain caused by Orlov’s bombshell, but the DCI’s orders had been adamant. No one, not even Calvin Bailey, the Head of Special Projects, was to be allowed to know—yet. When the Orlov accusation had been either shown to be false, or had been justified with hard evidence, the top echelon of the officers who ran the CIA would be personally briefed by the DCI himself. Until then, silence. Questions were asked, but none answered, and certainly nothing was volunteered. So Joe Roth lied.

He told Bailey the debriefing of Orlov was progressing well but at a slower pace. Naturally, the product Orlov remembered most clearly had already been divulged. Now it was a question of dragging smaller and smaller details from his memory. He was cooperating well, and the British were happy with him. Areas already covered were now being gone over again and again. It took time, but each recovering of an area of product brought a few more tiny details—tiny but valuable.

As Roth sipped his drink, Sam McCready turned up at the door. He had Denis Gaunt with him, and introductions were made again. Roth had to admire his British colleague’s performance. McCready was flawless, congratulating Bailey on a remarkable success with Orlov, and producing a menu of proposals the SIS had come up with to enhance Bailey’s visit to Britain.

Bailey was delighted with the tickets to the operas at Covent Garden and Glyndebourne. They would form the high point of the family’s twelve-day visit to London.

“And then back to the States?” asked McCready.

“No. A quick visit to Paris, Salzburg, and Vienna, then home,” said Bailey. McCready nodded. Salzburg and Vienna both had operas that were among the pinnacles of that art form anywhere in the world.

It turned into quite a jolly evening. The overweight Mrs. Bailey lumbered around dispensing drinks; Clara came to be presented before bed. She was introduced to Roth, Gaunt, and McCready, who gave her his lopsided grin. She smiled shyly. Within ten minutes he was delighting her with conjuring tricks. He took a coin from his pocket, flicked it in the air, and caught it, but when Clara forced open his clenched fist, it was gone. Then he produced the coin from her left ear. The child shrieked with delight. Mrs. Bailey beamed.

“Where did you learn that sort of thing?” asked Bailey.

“Just one of my more presentable talents,” said McCready.

Roth had watched in silence. Privately the troubled CIA agent wondered if McCready could make the allegations made by Orlov disappear with the same ease as the coin. He doubted it.

McCready caught his eye, reading his thoughts. Gently, he shook his head. Not now, Joe. Not yet. He turned his attention back to the now-devoted little girl.

The three visitors left after nine o’clock. On the pavement McCready murmured to Roth, “How goes the investigation, Joe?”

“You’re full of crap,” said Roth.

“Do be careful,” said McCready. “You’re being led up the garden path. By the nose.”

“That’s what we believe of you, Sam.”

“Who’s he nailed, Joe?”

“Back off,” snapped Roth. “As of now, Minstrel is Company business. Nothing to do with you.”

He turned and walked quickly away toward Grosvenor Square.

Max Kellogg sat with the DCI in the latter’s library two nights later with his files and his notes, copies of bank drafts, and photographs, and he talked.

He was tired unto death, exhausted by a workload that would and should normally have taken a team of men double the time. Dark smudges ringed his eyes.

The DCI sat on the other side of the old oak refectory table he had caused to be placed between them to carry the paperwork. The old man seemed hunched into his velvet smoking jacket. The lights shone on his bald and wrinkled head, and beneath his brows his eyes watched Kellogg and flicked over the proffered documents like those of an aged lizard.

When Kellogg had finally finished, he asked, “There can be no doubt?”

Kellogg shook his head. “Minstrel provided twenty-seven points of evidence. Twenty-six check out.”

“All circumstantial?”

“Inevitably. Except the testimony of the three bank tellers. They have made positive ID—from photographs, of course.”

“Can a man be convicted on circumstantial evidence alone?”

“Yes, sir. It is well precedented and amply documented. You do not always need a body to convict of murder.”

“No confession needed?”

“Not necessary. And almost certainly not forthcoming. This is one shrewd, skilled, tough, and very experienced operator.”

The DCI sighed. “Go home, Max. Go home to your wife. Stay silent. I’ll send for you when I need you again. Do not return to the office until I give the word. Take a break. Rest.”

He waved a hand toward the door. Max Kellogg rose and left. The old man summoned an aide and ordered a coded telegram on an “eyes only” basis to be sent to Joe Roth in London. It said simply: “Return at once. Same route. Report to me. Same place.” It was signed with the code word that would tell Roth it came directly from the DCI.

The shadows over Georgetown deepened that summer night, as did the shadows in an old man’s mind. The DCI sat alone and thought of the old days, of friends and colleagues, bright young men and women whom he had sent beyond the Atlantic wall and who had died under interrogation because of an informer, a traitor. There had been no excuses in those days, no Max Kelloggs to sift the evidence and produce an overwhelming case. And there had been no mercy in those days—not for an informer. He stared at the photo before him.

“You bastard,” he said softly, “you double-dyed traitorous bastard.”

The following day a messenger entered Sam McCready’s office at Century House and deposited a chit from the cipher room. McCready was busy; he gestured to Denis Gaunt to open it. Gaunt read it, whistled, and passed it over. It was a request from the CIA in Langley: During his vacation in Europe, Calvin Bailey was to be provided with access to no classified information.