The Deceiver (31 page)

“I do not know, my friend. I swear that to you.” He smiled again, his wide and attractive grin. “You want me to take the lie detector on it?”

Roth smiled back, but he thought, No, Peter, I rather think you can beat the lie detector—when you want to. He resolved to return to London in the morning and send his cable asking for a delay and a recall of Bailey to Washington—as a test. If there was one tiny element of doubt—and despite Kellogg’s pulverizing case, he now entertained an element of doubt—Roth would not carry out the order, not even for the DCI and his own flowering career. Some prices were just too high.

*   *   *

The following morning, the cleaners came in to the Alconbury quarters. These were local Huntingdon ladies, the same as those used by the rest of the base. Each had been security-cleared and given a pass to enter the cordoned area. Roth was eating breakfast opposite Orlov in the mess hall, trying to talk above the noise of a rotary floor-buffer polishing the corridor outside. The insistent hum of the machine went up and down as the buffing head swirled around and around.

Orlov wiped the coffee from his lips, mentioned that he needed to go to the men’s room, and left. In later life, Roth would never again mock the notion of a sixth sense. Seconds after Orlov had left, Roth noticed a change in the tone of the buffing machine. He walked out into the corridor to look at it. The buffer stood alone, its brushes turning, its motor emitting a single, high whine.

He had seen the cleaner when he went in for breakfast—a thin lady in print overalls, curlers in her hair, and a scarf wrapped over them. She had stepped aside to let him pass, then continued with her drudgery without raising her eyes. Now she was gone. At the end of the corridor, the men’s room door was still swinging gently.

Roth yelled, “Kroll!” at the top of his voice and raced down the corridor. She was on her knees in the middle of the men’s room floor, her plastic bucket of cleaning fluids and dusters spilled around her. In her hand she had the silenced Sig Sauer that the dusters had hidden. From the far end of the room, a cubicle door opened, and Orlov stepped out. The kneeling assassin raised the gun.

Roth did not speak Russian, but he knew a few words. He yelled “
Stoi
!” at the top of his voice.

She turned on her knees, Roth threw himself to the floor, there was a low
phut
, and Roth felt the shock waves near his head. He was still on the tiles when there was a crashing boom from behind him, and he felt more waves of reverberation beating around him. An enclosed toilet is no place to loose off a .44 Magnum.

Behind him, Kroll stood in the doorway, his Colt gripped two-handed. There was no need for a second shot. The woman lay on her back on the tiles, a blooming red stain vying with the roses on her overalls. Later, they would discover the real charlady bound and gagged at her home in Huntingdon.

Orlov still stood by the door of the cubicle, white-faced.

“More games!” he shouted. “It is enough of CIA games!”

“No games,” said Roth as he eased himself up. “This was no game. This was the KGB.”

Orlov looked again and saw that the dark red pool spreading across the tiles was not Hollywood makeup. Not this time.

It took Roth two hours to secure Orlov and the rest of the team a fast passage back to America and to secure their immediate transfer to the Ranch. Orlov left gladly, taking his precious collection of ballads with him. When the Air Force transport lifted off for the States, Roth took his car and headed back to London. He was deeply and bitterly angry.

In part, he blamed himself. He should have realized that after the exposure of Bailey, Alconbury could no longer be considered a safe haven for Orlov. But he had been so busy with McCready’s intervention, it had slipped his mind. Everyone is fallible. Had it been anyone but McCready, Roth would have been a hundred-percent convinced that the Brits were wrong and that Orlov was telling the truth, but because it was McCready, Roth was still prepared to concede to his friend a five-percent chance that he was right and that Bailey was straight.

But the ball now lay firmly in McCready’s court. He wondered why Bailey had not tipped off Moscow to arrange the assassination of Orlov sooner, before the KGB colonel had had a chance to name him. Perhaps he had hoped Orlov would not name him, did not have that information. It was Bailey’s mistake. Everyone is fallible.

Roth drove to the American Embassy. There was only one thing to do to back the claim that Gorodov was a real defector and Orlov a phony, and therefore Bailey was in the clear, an innocent man wrongly but cunningly set up. McCready would have to pull Gorodov out
now
so that Langley could talk to the man directly and sort it out once and for all. He went to his desk to make the call to McCready in Century House.

His head of station passed him in the corridor before he reached his desk.

“Oh, by the way,” said Bill Carver. “Something just came in, courtesy of Century. Seems our friends in Kensington Palace Gardens are moving things around. Their
Rezident
, Gorodov, flew back to Moscow this morning. It’s on your desk.”

Roth did not make the call to McCready. He sat at his desk. He was stunned. He was also vindicated—he and his DCI and his Agency, He even found it in his heart to be sorry for McCready. To have been so wrong, to have been so thoroughly duped for four years, must be a devastating blow. As for himself, he was relieved in a strange sort of way, despite what must now lie ahead. He had no more doubts now, not a shred. The two events of a single morning had swept his last doubts away. The DCI was right. What had to be done had to be done.

He was still sorry for McCready. Down at Century they must be pulling him apart, he thought.

They were—or rather, Timothy Edwards was.

“I’m sorry to have to say this, Sam, but it’s an utter bloody fiasco. I’ve just had a word with the Chief, and the received wisdom is that we may now seriously have to contemplate the notion that Keepsake was a Soviet plant all along.”

“He wasn’t,” said McCready flatly,

“So you say, but the present evidence points to the clear possibility that our American Cousins have got it right and we’ve been duped. Do you know what the perspectives of that are?”

“I can guess.”

“We’ll have to rethink, reevaluate every damned thing Keepsake gave us over four years. It’s a massive task. Worse, the Cousins shared it all, so we’ll have to tell them to rethink as well. The damage assessment will take years. Apart from that, it’s a major embarrassment. The Chief is not pleased.”

Sam sighed. It was ever thus. When Keepsake’s product was flavor-of-the-month, running him was a Service operation. Now it was entirely the Deceiver’s fault.

“Did he give you any indication that he intended to return to Moscow?”

“No.”

“When was he due to quit and come across to us?”

“Two, three weeks,” said McCready. “He was going to let me know when his situation had become hopeless, then jump the fence.”

“Well, he hasn’t. He’s gone home. Presumably voluntarily. Port Watch report that he passed through Heathrow without any coercion. We have to assume now that Moscow
is
his real home.

“And then there’s this damned Alconbury business. What on earth could have possessed you? You said it was a test. Well, Orlov has passed it with flying colors. The bastards tried to kill him. We’re extremely lucky no one’s dead but the assassin. That’s one thing we cannot tell the Cousins, ever. Bury it.”

“I still don’t believe Keepsake was ‘bent.’ ”

“Why ever not? He’s gone back to Moscow.”

“Possibly to get one last suitcase of documents for us.”

“Damned dangerous. He must be crazy. In his position—”

“True. A mistake, perhaps. But he’s like that. He promised years ago to bring back one last big consignment before he came over. I think he’s gone back for it.”

“Any evidence for this remarkable leap of faith?”

“Gut feeling.”

“Gut feeling!” expostulated Edwards. “We can’t achieve anything on gut feeling.”

“Columbus did. Mind if I see the Chief?”

“Appeal to Caesar, eh? You’re welcome. I don’t think you’ll get any change.”

But McCready did. Sir Christopher listened to his proposal carefully, then asked, “And supposing he’s loyal to Moscow after all?”

“Then I’ll know within seconds.”

“They could pick you up,” said the Chief.

“I don’t think so. Mr. Gorbachev doesn’t seem to want a diplomatic war at the moment.”

“He won’t get one,” said the Chief flatly. “Sam, you and I go back a long way. Back to the Balkans, the Cuban missile crisis, the first days of the Berlin Wall. You were damned good then, and you still are. But Sam, I may have made a mistake in bringing you into the Head Office. This is a job for a field team.”

“Keepsake won’t trust anyone else. You know that.”

The Chief sighed. “True. If anyone goes, you go. Is that it?”

“ ’Fraid so.”

The Chief thought it over for a moment. To lose Keepsake would be a devastating blow. If there was a tenth of a chance that McCready was right and Gorodov was not a plant after all, the Service should try to pull him out of there. But the political fallout of a major scandal—the Deceiver caught red-handed in Moscow—would ruin him. He sighed and turned from the window.

“All right. Sam. You can go. But you go alone. As of now, I have never heard of you. You are on your own.”

McCready prepared to go on those terms. He just hoped Mr. Gorbachev did not know them. It took him three days to make his plans.

On the second day, Joe Roth rang Calvin Bailey.

“Calvin, I’ve just come back from Alconbury. I think we should talk.”

“Sure, Joe, come on over.”

“Actually, there’s no great hurry. Why don’t you let me offer you dinner tomorrow night?”

“Ah, well now, that’s a nice thought, Joe. But Gwen and I have a pretty full schedule. I had lunch at the House of Lords today.”

“Really?”

“Yep. With the Chief of Defense Staff.”

Roth was amazed. At Langley, Bailey was chilly, distant, and skeptical. Let him loose in London, and he was like a child in a candy store. Why not? In six days, he’d be safely across the border in Budapest.

“Calvin, I know this marvelous old inn up the Thames at Eton. Serves wonderful seafood. They say Henry VIII used to have Anne Boleyn rowed up the river for secret meetings with her there.”

“Really? That old? Okay, look, Joe, tomorrow night we’re at Covent Garden. Thursday is clear.”

“Right. Thursday, Calvin. You’ve got it. I’ll be outside your apartment at eight. Thursday it is.”

The following day, Sam McCready completed his arrangements and slept what might turn out to be his last night in London.

On Thursday, three men entered Moscow on different flights. The first in was Rabbi Birnbaum. He arrived from Zurich by Swissair. The passport control officer at Scheremetyevo was from the KGB’s Border Guards Directorate, a young man with corn-blond hair and chill blue eyes. He gazed at the rabbi at length, then turned his attention to the passport. It was American, denoting the holder to be one Norman Birnbaum, age fifty-six.

Had the passport officer been older, he would have recalled the days when Moscow and indeed all Russia had many Orthodox Jews who looked like Rabbi Birnbaum. The rabbi was a stout man in a black suit with a white shirt and black tie. He wore a full gray beard and moustache. On his face, topped by a black homburg, his eyes were masked by lenses so thick, the pupils blurred as the man peered to see. Twisted gray ringlets hung from beneath his hatband down each side of his face. The face in the passport was exactly the same, but without the hat.

The visa was in order, issued by the Soviet Consulate General in New York.

The officer looked up again. “The purpose of your visit to Moscow?”

“I want to visit my son for a short stay. He works at the American Embassy here.”

“Moment, please,” said the officer. He rose and retired. Behind a glass door he could be seen consulting with a senior officer who studied the passport. Orthodox rabbis were rare in a country where the last rabbinical school had been abolished decades earlier. The junior officer returned.

“Wait, please.” He gestured for the next in line to approach.

Phone calls were made. Someone in Moscow consulted a diplomatic list. The senior officer returned with the passport and whispered to the junior. Apparently there was a Roger Birnbaum listed at the Economic Section of the U.S. Embassy. The diplomatic list did not record, however, that Roger Birnbaum’s real father had retired to Florida and had last been to synagogue for his son’s bar mitzvah twenty years earlier. The rabbi was waved through.

They still checked his suitcase at customs. It contained the usual changes of shirt, socks, and shorts, another black suit, a washkit, and a copy of the Talmud in Hebrew. The customs officer flicked through it uncomprehendingly. Then he let the rabbi go.

Rabbi Birnbaum took the Aeroflot coach into central Moscow, drawing several curious or amused glances all the way. From the terminus building, he walked to the National Hotel on Manezh Square, entered the men’s room, used the urinal until the only other occupant left, and slipped into a cubicle.

The spirit gum solvent was located in his cologne flask. When he emerged, he was still in a dark jacket, but the reversible trousers were now medium gray. The hat was inside the suitcase, along with the bushy eyebrows, the beard and moustache, and the shirt and tie. His hair, instead of gray, was chestnut brown, and his torso was covered by a canary yellow polo-neck sweater that had been under his shirt. He left the hotel unnoticed, took a cab, and was dropped at the gates of the British Embassy, on the embankment opposite the Kremlin.

Two militia from the MVD stood guard duty outside the gates, on Soviet territory, and asked for his identification. He showed them his British passport and simpered at the young guard as it was examined. The young militiaman was embarrassed and handed it quickly back. Irritably, he gestured the gay Englishman into the grounds of his own embassy and raised his eyebrows expressively to his colleague as he did so. Seconds later, the Englishman disappeared through the doors.