The Deceiver (29 page)

“Orlov?” asked Gaunt.

“Gets my vote,” said McCready. “What the hell can I do to convince them?”

He made his own decision on that. He used a dead-letter drop to get a message to Keepsake, asking for a meeting without delay.

In the lunch hour McCready was informed in a routine note from Airport Watch, a division of MI-5, that Joe Roth had left London again for Boston, still using the same phony passport.

That same evening, having gained five hours crossing the Atlantic, Joe Roth sat at the refectory table at the DCI’s mansion. The Director sat opposite him, Max Kellogg to his right. The old man looked grim, Kellogg merely nervous. At his home in Alexandria he had slept for most of the twenty-four hours between his arrival there the previous evening and the telephoned summons to return to Georgetown. He had left all his documents with the Director, but they were again in front of him now.

“Begin again, Max. At the beginning. Just the way you told it to me.”

Kellogg glanced at Roth, adjusted his eyeglasses, and took a sheet from the top of the pile.

“In May 1967, Calvin Bailey was sent as a Provincial Officer, a G-12, to Vietnam. Here is the posting. He was assigned, as you see, to the Phoenix Program. You’ve heard of that, Joe.”

Roth nodded. At the height of the Vietnam war, the Americans had mounted an operation to attempt to counter the drastic effects being secured by the Viet Cong on the local population through selective, public, and sadistic assassinations. The notion was to use counterterror against the terrorists, to identify and eliminate Viet Cong activists. It was the Phoenix Program. Just how many Viet Cong suspects were sent to their maker without benefit of evidence or trial has never been established. Some have put the figure at twenty thousand; the CIA put it at eight thousand.

How many of the suspects were really Viet Cong remains even more problematic, for it soon became the practice for Vietnamese to denounce any person against whom they had a grudge. People were denounced on the basis of family feuds, clan wars, land squabbles, even debts owed and never to be collected if the creditor was dead.

Usually the denounced person was handed over to the Vietnamese secret police or the army, the ARVN. The interrogations they underwent and the ways they died tested even oriental ingenuity.

“There were young Americans, fresh out of the States, who saw things down there that no man should be asked to watch. Some quit, some needed professional help. One turned, in his mind, to the very philosophy of the men he had been sent to fight. Calvin Bailey was that man, as George Blake had turned in Korea. We have no proof of that because it happened inside a human head, but the evidence that follows makes the supposition totally reasonable.

“In March 1968 came what we believe to be the climactic experience. Bailey was present at the village of My Lai just four hours after the massacre. You recall My Lai?”

Roth nodded again. It was all part of his youth. He recalled it all too well. On March 16, 1968, an American infantry company came across a small village called My Lai, where they suspected there might be Viet Cong or sympathizers hiding. Exactly why they lost control and went berserk was only inadequately established later. They started firing when they could get no response to their questions, and once it started, it did not stop until at least 450 unarmed civilians—men, women, and children—lay dead in mangled heaps. It took eighteen months for the news to leak out in America, and three years almost to the day for Lieutenant William Calley to be convicted by court-martial. But Calvin Bailey had reached the spot after four hours and seen it all.

“Here is his report at the time,” said Kellogg, passing over several sheets, “written in his own hand. As you can see, it was written by a badly shaken man. Unfortunately, it seems this experience turned Bailey into a Communist sympathizer.

“Six months later, Bailey reported he had recruited two Vietnamese cousins, Nguyen Van Troc and Vo Nguyen Can, and infiltrated them into the Viet Cong’s own intelligence setup. It was a major coup, the first of many. According to Bailey, he ran these men for two years. According to Orlov, it was the other way around. They ran him. Look at this.”

He passed Roth two photographs. One photograph showed two young Vietnamese males, taken against a background of the jungle. One man had a cross over his face, indicating he was now dead. The other photograph, taken much later and in a setting of verandah with rattan chairs, showed a group of Vietnamese officers at ease, being served tea. The steward was looking up at the camera and smiling.

“The tea-server ended up as a boat-person, a refugee, at a camp in Hong Kong. The photo was his prize possession, but the British were interested in the group of officers and took it from him. Look at the man to the steward’s left.”

Roth looked. It was Nguyen Van Troc, ten years older but the same man. He wore a senior officer’s shoulder boards.

“He’s now deputy head of Vietnamese counterintelligence,” said Kellogg. “Point made.

“Next, we have Minstrel’s assertion that Bailey was passed on to the KGB right there in Saigon. Minstrel named a now-dead Swedish businessman as the KGB
Rezident
for Saigon in 1970. We have known since 1980 that the businessman was not who he said he was, and Swedish counterintelligence long broke his cover story. He never came from Sweden, so he probably came from Moscow. Bailey could have seen him whenever he wanted.

“Next, Tokyo. Minstrel says Drozdov himself went there in the same year, 1970, and took over Bailey, giving him the name Sparrowhawk. We cannot prove Drozdov was there, but Minstrel is dead accurate on the dates. And Bailey was there on those dates. Here is his movement order by Air America, our own airline. It all fits. He returned to America in 1971 a dedicated KGB agent.”

After that, Calvin Bailey had served in two posts in Central and South America and three in Europe, a continent he had also visited many times as he rose in the hierarchy and undertook flying visits to inspect out-stations.

“Help yourself to a drink, Joe,” growled the DCI. “It gets worse.”

“Minstrel named four banks into which his department in Moscow had made transfers of cash to the traitor. He even got the dates of the transfers right. Here are the four accounts, one in each of the banks he named: in Frankfurt, Helsinki, Stockholm, and Vienna. Here are the deposit slips, large sums and in cash. Payments all made within a month of the accounts being opened. Four tellers were shown a photograph; three identified it as the man who opened the accounts. This photograph.”

Kellogg slipped a photograph of Calvin Bailey across to Roth. He stared at the face as if at the face of a stranger. He could not believe it. He had eaten with the man, drunk with him, met his family. The face in the photo stared back blankly.

“Minstrel gave us five pieces of information that were in the possession of the KGB that should never have entered its possession. And he gave the times those pieces entered their possession. Each piece was known to Calvin Bailey and only a few others.

“Even Bailey’s triumphs, the coups that secured him his promotions, were fed to him by Moscow—genuine sacrifices made by the KGB to enhance their man’s standing with us. Minstrel names four successful operations conducted by Bailey. And he’s right—except that he claims they were all permitted by Moscow, and I’m afraid he’s right, Joe.

“That makes in all twenty-four precise items extracted from Orlov, and twenty-one check out. That leaves three, much more recent. Joe, when Orlov called you that day in London, what name did he use?”

“Hayes,” said Roth.

“Your professional name. How did he know it?”

Roth shrugged.

“Finally we come to the two recent killings of the agents named by Orlov. Bailey told you to get the Orlov product to him first, by hand, right?”

“Yes. But that would be normal. It was a Special Operations project, bound to be serious material. He would want to check it over first.”

“When Orlov fingered the Brit, Milton-Rice, Bailey got that first?”

Roth nodded.

“The Brits three days later?”

“Yes.”

“And Milton-Rice was dead before the Brits could get to him. Same with Remyants. I’m sorry, Joe. It’s watertight. There’s just too much evidence.”

Kellogg closed his last file and left Roth staring at the material in front of him: the photos, the bank statements, the airline tickets, the movement orders. It was like a jigsaw puzzle assembled, not a piece missing. Even the motive, those awful experiences in Vietnam, was logical.

Kellogg was thanked and dismissed. The DCI stared across the table.

“What do you think, Joe?”

“You know the British think Minstrel’s a phony,” said Roth. “I told you the first time I came what London’s view was.”

The DCI made an irritable gesture of dismissal. “Proof, Joe. You asked them for hard proof. Did they give you any?”

Roth shook his head.

“Did they say they had a high-placed asset in Moscow who had denounced Minstrel?”

“No, sir. Sam McCready denied that.”

“So they’re full of shit,” said the DCI. “They have no proof, Joe—just the loser’s resentment at not having gotten Minstrel to themselves. This is proof, Joe. Pages and pages of it.”

Roth stared dumbly at the papers. To know that he had worked closely with a man who was steadily and with deliberate malice betraying his country over many years was like having a chunk blown out of his midriff. He felt sick. Quietly he said, “What do you want me to do, sir?”

The DCI rose and paced his elegant library. “I am the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Appointed by the President himself. As such, I am asked to protect this country as best I can and may, from all her enemies. Some within, some without. I cannot and will not go to the President and tell him we have yet another massive scandal that makes all previous treacheries right back to Benedict Arnold look like nickel-and-dime affairs. Not after the recent series of breaches of security.

“I will not expose him to the savaging of the media and the ridicule of foreign nations. There can be no arrest and trial, Joe. The trial has been here, the verdict has been reached, and the sentence must be from me, God help me.”

“What do you want me to do?” repeated Roth.

“In the last analysis, Joe, I could steel myself not to worry about the broken trusts, the traduced secrets, the loss of confidence, the wrecked morale, the scavenging media, the snickering foreign nations. But I
cannot
expel from my mind the images of the agents blown away, the widows and the orphans. For a traitor, there can be only one verdict, Joe.

“He does not return here, ever. He does not soil this land with his feet ever again. He is consigned to outer darkness. You will return to England, and before he can skip to Vienna and thence across the border into Hungary—which is assuredly what he has been preparing to do ever since Minstrel came over—you will do what has to be done.”

“I’m not certain I can do that, sir.”

The DCI leaned over the table, and with his hand he raised Roth’s chin so that he stared into the younger man’s eyes. His own were as hard as obsidian.

“You will do it, Joe. Because it is my order as Director, because through our President I speak for this land, and because you will do it for your country. Go back to London and do what has to be done.”

“Yes, sir,” said Joe Roth.

THE STEAMER PULLED AWAY FROM
Westminster Pier precisely at three and began its leisurely journey downriver toward Greenwich. A crowd of Japanese tourists lined the rail, cameras clicking like subdued machine-gun fire to record the images of the Houses of Parliament slipping away.

As the boat neared midriver, a man in a light gray suit quietly rose and walked to the stern, where he stood at the rail gazing down into the churning wake. Minutes later another man, in a light summer raincoat, rose from a different bench and went to join him.

“How are things at the embassy?” asked McCready quietly.

“Not so good,” said Keepsake. “The fact of a major counterintelligence operation is confirmed. So far, only the behavior of my junior staff is being gone over. But intensively. When they have been cleared, the focus of search will move higher—toward me. I am covering tracks as best I can, but there are some things, losing entire files, that would do more harm than good.”

“How long do you think you’ve got?”

“A few weeks at most.”

“Be careful, my friend. Err on the side of caution. We absolutely do not want another Penkovsky.”

In the early 1960s, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky of the GRU worked for the British for two and a half brilliant years. Until then and for many years afterward, he had been by far the most valuable Soviet agent ever recruited, and the most damaging to the USSR. In his brief span he passed over more than five thousand top-secret documents, culminating in vital intelligence on the Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, information that enabled President Kennedy to play a masterly hand against Nikita Khrushchev. But he overstayed his time. When urged to come out, he insisted on staying for a few more weeks, was unmasked, interrogated, tried, and shot.

Keepsake smiled. “Don’t worry, no Penkovsky affair. Not again. And how are things with you?”

“Not good. We believe Orlov has denounced Calvin Bailey.”

Keepsake whistled. “That high. Well, well. Calvin Bailey himself. So
he
was the target of Project Potemkin. Sam, you must persuade them they are wrong, that Orlov is lying.”

“I can’t,” said McCready. “I’ve tried. They’ve got the bit between their teeth.”

“You must try again. There is a life at stake here.”

“You don’t really think—”

“Oh yes, old friend, I do,” said the Russian. “The DCI is a passionate man. I don’t think he can allow another major scandal, bigger than all the rest put together, at this stage in his President’s career. He will take the option of ensuring silence. Forever. But of course, it won’t work. He will think, if the act is done, that it will never get out. We know better, don’t we? The rumors will start quite soon because the KGB will ensure that they start. They are very good at that.