Janos jotted down three of the file numbers, then looked over his shoulder at Mary, who was hovering just behind him. “Do you want to bring me some pink slips?”
“I’ll do them for you, Janos,” she said. “It’ll speed things up.”
She went back to her counter as Janos moved to another drawer, this time selecting the card of Aumann, Dieter K., born in 1909 in Hamburg, Germany, ending his career, it seemed, with the BND (the West German intelligence service) in 1957. He jotted down a pair of addresses.
Mary returned with a bundle of pink retrieval slips. Each was supposed to be filled out with the name or subject of the requested file and its archives address, as well as the date and time and the name of the requesting officer, whose signature was also required.
“What have you come up with here?” she asked.
Janos tore off the top sheet of his tablet and gave it to her. “I’m going in for misfiles. Dig these up by address alone. When they come in I’ll match them against name and operation.”
“You won’t find any in there,” she said.
“None?” Janos chided.
She grinned. “Not one.”
As she began filling out the slips, Janos quickly moved to the Bs, where he found Basulto’s name in the second drawer. He glanced at Mary, who was still busy writing, then back at Basulto’s card. There were only three reference files under his name. One was listed as Operation Sweep, another Operation Box Cars, and the last was Operation White Out. McGarvey had worried that there would be no references to Basulto in the files, or at least none under his own name. The alternate source would have been Roger Harris. After that it could have been anyone’s guess. Only they had gotten lucky on the first try. Janos jotted down the three addresses and then as Mary came toward him he closed the drawer and tore off the paper for her. She gave him a half a dozen pink slips to date and sign. As he was signing them he was conscious that she was studying him. He looked up when he was finished.
“How many more?” she asked.
“I don’t know. A few more maybe.”
“I’ll just get started with these.”
Janos pulled out a stopwatch, made a show of setting it to zero, then clicked the start button. “You’re off, then,” he said, stepping around her and moving over to the next row.
McGarvey had been a surprise last night. Not so pleasant for Pat, though she had finally asked him to stay for dinner. The children loved him. He was Uncle Kirk, Daddy’s best friend. Only five years ago when the witch-hunters had been in full stride, daddy hadn’t done much to help his friend. His mother told him once that people do most things out of guilt. It was easy to see in others, but not so easy in yourself. Today part was guilt, but another part was … what? Larceny? McGarvey’s warning that Basulto could still be working for someone within the Company rang in his ears. In a way the old adrenaline felt good.
In ten minutes Janos had picked out a dozen more files, as the first of the runners came back. He set himself up at one of the tables, his briefcase unlocked and open beside him, his stopwatch beside him, a fresh tablet and several sharp pencils at the ready. Mary brought him the first of the jackets, and then a coffee, black, as he started to work.
The case histories themselves were contained in thick buff-colored envelopes with accordion bottoms and tie flaps. He opened the first of the Albright cases marked with its address and, in gray type, CONFIDENTIAL: OPERATION HAT RACK. All case files were the same. Just inside was a slip on which was marked the date of each withdrawal and the initials of the withdrawing officer. On the first page of the main body of the file was a summary of the jacket’s contents: work sheets, budget items, justification data, authorization documents, planning and analysis, actual details of the operation, follow-up analysis, and references, if any, to other files. Hat Rack was an operation that had taken place in East Berlin in January of 1948. Albright, along with a half-dozen Americans and some British agents, were to organize as many cells as possible of unhappy East Germans who would be willing to conduct a rumor campaign of an impending Russian drive to round up petty criminals and low-ranking Nazis for work in the mines in Poland. The operation had apparently meant to stir up unrest in the Russian sector. There was a lot of that sort of thing going around in those days. The Russians to this day maintained it was just because of that kind of Western operation that they were forced into building the Berlin Wall.
During his reading Janos made a great fuss of making frequent references to the various files he carried in his briefcase. After half an hour, when the remainder of the jackets had been brought to him, his files were intermingled with the ones from Archives. It would be no problem switching the contents of the Basulto jackets to three of his own.
For a while he stayed away from the Basulto files. Twice he went to the card catalogs where he pretended to make reference to the files, and after a short time his paper shuffling and trips back and forth became so commonplace that not even Mary paid much attention to him.
At one point he sat back, stretched his legs under the table, and sighed deeply as if he were a man weary from his labors. Actually his chest had begun to feel tight, his mouth dry, and the old heartburn had returned. It was a part of the business. It burned out a lot of agents, but he had been weaned on such feelings.
Mary turned away as he pulled the first of Basulto’s files to him and looked at the slip on the inside cover. The file had been signed out three times in 1959, seven times in 1960, three in 1961, and then once in 1964. It had not been signed out since then. The first times the withdrawing officer’s initials were R.H. — probably McGarvey’s Roger Harris. Whoever had signed out the file in 1964, however, had signed his or her initials in a tiny, illegible scrawl. Impossible to make out.
Turning next to the contents, Janos pulled out the first page. For a long moment he simply stared at it uncomprehendingly. It was nothing. Just a page from an encyclopedia. Euphrates to Euripides. The first page should have been the summary. But this was nothing. Someone had tampered with the bloody file. Janos could feel the tightness building in his chest. McGarvey had warned him. He glanced up toward the counter. Mary was still talking with one of the clerks. He took the rest of the thick sheath of papers and documents out of the jacket and began thumbing through them. They were nothing. It was almost too incredible for him to believe. Here in Archives! Basulto’s file — at least this one — contained nothing more than encyclopedia pages, telephone directory pages, and some blank papers. Nothing of any significance. No underlined messages. Nothing with a date such as a newspaper or magazine page.
In 1964, this file was still up at Langley. Nothing had been moved down here yet. Almost anyone could have had access. But Christ, why? he asked himself.
Mary was looking at him. He forced himself to smile. Lean forward. Casually, Janos, he told himself. After a moment or two, Mary went back to her work.
He pulled the second Basulto file over, this one marked SECRET: OPERATION BOX CARS. Inside, the withdrawal slip showed some activity in the late fifties and early sixties with the last action coming on the same date in 1964. For a few terrible seconds Janos could not bring himself to look through the jacket. He knew what he was going to find, but he did not want it to be so. He could feel himself being drawn into McGarvey’s operation against his will. He should have listened to Pat. She had known. She had seen it in Kirk’s eyes.