“There are unusual aspects to the matter.”
“Where is he?”
“Inside,” Hanley said.
“What is the problem?”
Hanley had not said there was a problem but it was implied in everything from the shallow lie he told Devereaux to the unusual trek to Devereaux’s retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“We would like to be certain. Of his intentions.”
Devereaux reached for the bottle of Polish vodka and poured another long drink. He did not offer the bottle to Hanley; neither man sat down.
“Nothing is certain.”
“Langley was burned last August on that fellow. You know the one.”
“The alleged Soviet cipher clerk.”
“Very clumsy. It exposed a mole of theirs working inside the Central Committee apparatus.”
“Yes,” Devereaux said. The CIA mole had been murdered in his cell by two KGB interrogators who were subsequently reprimanded for their overzealous examination of the prisoner. “It was too bad.”
“Too bad,” Hanley agreed with matching insincerity. “Langley can get away with mistakes like that but we can’t. I don’t have to tell you the Section lives too close to the edge. These are perilous times for all of us.”
“Yes, you don’t have to tell me.”
Hanley frowned. “That’s sarcasm,” he said pedantically. “We want to minimize the risk in contact.”
“For the Section,” Devereaux said.
Hanley looked surprised. “Of course for the Section.”
Devereaux waited.
“This is a delicate business.”
For the first time, Devereaux smiled. The smile was without comfort. Hanley was chief operations officer for the Section, which meant he had never been on an operation; operations were actions and all actions in the bureaucratic establishment were fraught with peril and political liabilities. Hanley would prefer to do nothing, to not have been contacted by this Soviet defector; but the single action made a response necessary, if only to ensure that nothing would result and nothing would be done.
In the shadows of the dim-lit room, with the fire making dancing lights on the walls, Hanley did not see the smile. “We will minimize risk at contact. He isn’t the sort who is expected to turn, you see. I want you to see what he is like, take his measure; we need some input to make a decision.”
“You sound like a corporate recruiter.”
“Yes,” Hanley said, suddenly pleased. “I suppose we are in a way.”
“What do you want?”
“Our defector-in-waiting comes from a sensitive area inside the apparatus of the Opposition. But not one that is of particular interest to us. So two things come to mind: Why does he want out? Why does he want to come out through the Section?”
“Because Langley would be leery of another defector so soon after being burned last August,” Devereaux replied.
“Exactly. The Opposition has been neglecting us. Perhaps the Section would be so eager for a small coup that we would not be careful when checking his bona fides.”
“And that might mean he is a triple.”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
Devereaux put down the empty glass and went to the fire. He picked up a black poker and shoved a large piece of oak back into the grating. The gesture exposed unburned wood and the fire leaped in the stone fireplace.
“Where does he come from?”
“Leningrad. He’s very high in the Gulag.”
Devereaux turned from the fireplace with the poker in his hand. His eyes betrayed interest for the first time. “That’s odd,” he said.
“Yes, isn’t it? Obviously, we can’t ignore him. But who cares about the Gulag Archipelago?”
“Don’t let the human-rights groups hear that.”
“If they had an interest in my opinion, I would tell them,” Hanley said stiffly. “There are no secrets in the Gulag, not secrets worth having. We proved that prisoners worked on the gas pipeline, we fed the information to every agency, we created a propaganda front in Europe… to what effect?” There was an edge to his voice. “Nothing. The Soviet Union has slaves and prisoners and no one is concerned; and once we have learned about the prisoners, what more is there to say? There is no profit in the knowledge.”
Devereaux stared at Hanley a moment and then put down the poker. “Why has this one sought us out?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? The one you have to answer.”
“Do I go into black?” Black was undercover, illegal.
“No.” Hanley crossed to the fire and held out his hands to the flames though he felt perfectly at home with the cold in the cabin. In the bowels of the Department of Agriculture building on Fourteenth Street in Washington, Hanley kept his office at sixty degrees Fahrenheit, summer and winter. The flames gave color to his pale features.
“You agree to the operation?” Hanley asked softly.
“No. Not at all.” Devereaux said the words flatly. “But there is no choice, is there?”
No, Hanley thought. There is no choice at all. There never was.
“His name is Tartakoff. They accord him a degree of confidence, which means a degree of freedom. That bothers us as well. He received a rapid elevation after Andropov took over. That bothers us, too. He’s only forty-six. Far too young for those people.”
“You know a lot already.”
“Too much. Everything is so delicate.” Hanley frowned. “He makes a shopping trip next week to Helsinki.”
“From Leningrad.”
Hanley nodded. “You can meet him at Stockmann’s. Were you ever in Helsinki?”
“Going back. Once. To Vietnam. It was 1966.” Devereaux seemed to recall the memory involuntarily. The words were as flat as computer-generated speech. “There was business in Copenhagen; it had a connection to that business at Da Nang. Do you remember?”
“Vaguely.”
“I took Japan Lines back across the Soviet Union.”
“That was risky.”
“I was an accredited journalist.”
“But they knew what you were.”
“It didn’t matter. I spent a long night in Helsinki.”
“He has a wife but he does not mention her in the matter. He’s buying her some trinkets at Stockmann’s. He likes to get out of the Soviet Union. He spent two years in Paris in the early seventies.”
“KGB.”
“Of course.”
“What does he have to sell?”
“Himself at the moment. It’s not enough. I want you to lead him, find out what he can put together for us.”
“What do I tell him?”
Hanley stared at the fire as though hypnotized by it. He had been a child in Omaha so long ago that it seemed remembered as a fragment of someone else’s dream. A fire in a fireplace and the Nebraska winter raging outside. He saw ships colliding in the fire; the ships were the logs, the flames the death. He could hear men crying as they fell into the sea.
“Anything you wish to tell him. Promise anything because it doesn’t matter. Take the time to see what he is worth to us.”
“Only promises after all?”
Hanley blinked and tore his eyes reluctantly from the flames. He could see the cold, mocking face clearly despite the shadows. He felt the chill of the gray eyes resting on him.
‘I have to get back,” Hanley said. “This seemed the best way. I thought if I called you to Washington, it would be under false colors. I mean the Asian business. It’s difficult to arrange, Devereaux.”
“You’re a liar, Hanley.”
Hanley did not speak for a moment. When he found his voice, it was sure and flat, the bureaucrat who has always prepared an answer. “Examine Tartakoff. If he promises us nothing, we have no use for him. There must be a middle ground between too much and too little.”
“Until then, he’s trapped.”
“Yes. It’s the only comforting part of the whole matter.”
“He can’t get out without us.”
“He wouldn’t be alive by the time he got to Paris.”