“And none of them has been caught?”
Alevy shook his head. “Not that I know of. No one was even looking until recently. And what do we look for? Someone who drinks tea from a glass and writes his k’s backward?”
“Someone who is caught spying.”
“They probably don’t spy in the conventional sense. Their people are probably divided into several categories: sleeper agents, agents in place, agents of influence, and so forth. Their covers are perfect, and they never draw attention to themselves. Even if we nabbed one spying, we’d be hard-pressed to prove the guy was born and raised in Volgograd, as long as he stuck to his legend.”
“If you attached electrodes to his balls and jolted him until he spoke Russian, you’d know.”
“You know something? I don’t think the guy would speak Russian. And even if he exposed himself, what good would it do? He’s not part of a cell or a ring. He’s got to be on his own if this thing is going to work for them.”
“But he’s got to have a control officer, Seth. Someone in the Soviet embassy in D.C. or the UN delegation in New York or the consulate in San Francisco. What good is he if he’s really on his own? How does he deliver his work product? They’re not going to trust clandestine radios or drop sites.”
“No. He’s got to hand over his product and make oral reports. So he goes on foreign vacations like other Americans. Maybe he even takes one of these package tours to Moscow. As far as we can figure, all agent contact is made overseas.”
Hollis walked to a tall curio cabinet. The shelves contained small figurines in porcelain and bisque, eighteenth-century ladies in low-cut gowns and goldilocks curls, and gentlemen in knickers and wigs. They could be Frenchmen or Englishmen of the same period, Hollis thought, but there was something about them that was not quite right, not quite like the real thing you’d see in a London antique shop. Hollis opened the cabinet and took out a six-inch statuette of a man in riding livery. He said, “What is it, Seth? The Tartar influence? The Kazak influence? Why aren’t they exactly like us? I know they can look Scandinavian or Germanic, like Burov, but it’s something more than genetic. It’s a whole different soul and psyche, an ancestral memory; it’s the deep winter snow, and Mongols sweeping over the steppe, and always feeling like they’re inferior to the West and getting shafted by Europe and Cyrillic letters and Slavic fatalism and an off-brand Christianity and who the hell knows what else. But whatever it is, you can spot it, spot them, like an art expert can spot a forgery across the room.” He looked at the figure in his hand and threw it to Alevy. “You understand?”
Alevy caught it gingerly. “I understand. But we can’t find two thousand of them that way.” Alevy put the figure down.
“No.” Hollis began to close the cabinet door and saw the Palekh box that Lisa had bought in the Arbat. He recalled his conversation with her and understood that he’d known then what Alevy was telling him now about the nature of the Charm School. He had the bizarre thought that Lisa herself could be a product of the Charm School, but of course that wasn’t possible considering her verifiable background, which was double-checked by State Department Intelligence. But if he had that passing thought, he could imagine the fear and distrust that would run rampant in American society, defense industries, institutions, and government offices if it became known that there could be two thousand KGB agents among them.
Alevy said, “Actually, I think we found two. Right here. In the embassy, Sam. Right under our noses. Any guesses?”
Hollis thought a moment. He had to discount the men and women with high-level clearances, which left the nonworking spouses, the Marines, and the service people. Suddenly two names came immediately to him, as if he’d known all along. Bits and pieces of conversation ran through his mind, small details that had struck him as odd but had not fully alerted him because he had not known about the Charm School then. He said to Alevy, “Our nice handyman and housekeeper. The Kellums.”
Alevy replied, “Great minds think alike. When they were hired, they were given only low-level security investigations commensurate with the job. I wired Langley a while ago. Now it seems their backgrounds are not checking out.” Alevy rubbed his eyes wearily and continued, “I’m having the bartender, the cooks, the chauffeurs, and the whole American service staff rechecked. We thought when we kicked out the FNs, we were getting rid of the security problem we had. But with the Russian staff, you watched them like hawks and kept them in designated areas. Now with all these low-level, low-security classification Americans, they wander around freely because they’re American. But evidently some of them are Russian wolves in designer clothes.”
Hollis thought about the Kellums’ going through his rooms, his desk, his letters. Burov even knew how much scotch he drank and the brand of undershorts he preferred. He pictured the Kellums, a pleasant middle-aged couple, ostensibly from Milwaukee, and recalled his brief conversations with them.
Alevy seemed to be reading his thoughts. He asked, “So, could you tell the Kellums weren’t exactly like us?”
“No, but then we’re not exactly like each other either. America is as diverse as the Soviet Union. You and I do the Baltic bit when we’re snooping around in Russia, but in the Baltic, we’re Ukrainians or Byelorussians. They must do the same sort of thing. The ones who have developed, say, a Boston accent and legend, won’t operate in Boston, because they couldn’t pull it off there. But to answer your question, the Kellums had me fooled.”
“Me too. But now that we know, we can clean house a bit. However, a lot of damage has been done. And we have only two down and about two thousand to go. We have to come up with a hell of a lot better way to find these people who are scattered from one end of America to another. Not to mention overseas military bases and, as we are embarrassed to discover, our embassies.”
Hollis seemed lost in thought, then said, “But something you said before… these Soviet agents have married, formed relationships, have American children, live the good life.”
“And may now, as you are suggesting, Sam, be having very mixed feelings. And yet, not one has defected. Why not? Partly, we think, because there’s no reason to defect. In a bizarre sort of way some of them have already defected. The KGB knows that but doesn’t care as long as they go on their overseas vacations a few times a year and turn in good work product. And maybe the reward for fifteen or twenty years’ service is retirement — in America, if they wish. Irony of ironies. Of course, there are other inducements to lead a double life: ideology, money, and fear. The KGB is perfectly capable of wiping out a person’s family in Russia or in America if that person betrays them. But realize, too, that these are handpicked agents. Many of them need no threats or inducements. Many of them are not going to be seduced by the American lifestyle or by democracy or anything they see.”
“You don’t think so?”
Alevy massaged his temples. “You know, Sam, we tend to overrate the seductiveness and quality of our system. That’s heresy, I know, but it’s true. Two hundred million Ivans and Natashas do not want to move to America just because they know we have freedom and dishwashers. There is a certain purity of the Russian soul, a fierce patriotism somewhat like our own and a half-assed belief which still lingers, that things will one day get better for them.” Alevy refilled his glass. “That’s not to say we won’t get a defector or two one day, but as I said, that won’t roll up the operation.”