The Company: A Novel of the CIA (50 page)

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Authors: Robert Littell

Tags: #Literary, #International Relations, #Intelligence officers, #Fiction, #United States, #Spy stories, #Espionage

BOOK: The Company: A Novel of the CIA
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"Is that what you're telling the State Department—that you think the Red Army will invade Hungary?" Swett asked.

"Count on it, the Red Army will be back, and in force," the professor predicted.

"If the Russians do invade Hungary," Leo said, "America and NATO will be hard put to sit on their hands. After all these years of talking about rolling back Communism, we'll have to put up or shut up if we want to remain credible."

Adelle, who worked as a legislative assistant for Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, looked surprised. "Are you saying we ought to go to war to keep our credibility?" she asked.

Before Leo could answer, the State Department desk officer said, "Mark my words, nobody's going to war over Hungary. Knowing Ike, knowing John Foster Dulles, if push comes to shove my guess is we'll back down."

"I hope you're wrong," Leo persisted earnestly. "I hope, at the very least, they have the nerve to bluff the Russians. Look, if the Russians can't be sure how America will react, then the doves on the Politburo, Khrushchev among them, might be able to keep the hawks in line."

The grandfather clock was closing in on midnight by the time the last of the guests had departed. With only family remaining—since the birth of his twin granddaughters, two years before, Philip Swett grudgingly included Leo under 'family'—the host broke out a bottle of very aged and very expensive Napoleon cognac and filled three snifters. "To us," he said, raising a glass. A grunt of pure pleasure escaped his lips after he swallowed the first sip of cognac. Turning the snifter in his fingers, he gazed sideways at his son-in-law. "Knew you were an ardent anti-Communist, Leo—suppose you wouldn't be in the Company if you weren't—but never thought you were madcap about it. This Hungary business brings out the gung-ho in you."

"There is something exhilarating about a slave nation breaking free, " Leo admitted.

"I've got nothing against a slave nation breaking free long as it doesn't bring the world down around our ears."

"Each of us has his own idea of where American national interest lies—" Leo started to say.

"By golly, it's not in America's national interest to bring on a nuclear war which could reduce America to volcanic ashes!" Swett squinted at Leo. "You appear to be pretty damn sure of yourself when you say Khrushchev and Company went and lost their taste for confrontation. What do you know that's not in the newspapers? Has that Pickle Factory of yours got a spy in the Politburo?"

Leo smiled uncomfortably. "It's just an educated guess."

Swett snorted. "Ask me, sounds more like an uneducated guess."

"I don't agree with what he's saying any more than you do, Daddy," Adelle said, "but Leo's entitled to his opinion."

"Not saying he isn't. Just saying he's full of crap."

Swett was grinning as he spoke, which made it impossible for Leo to take offense. "On that note," he said, setting the snifter on a table, pushing himself to his feet, "we ought to be heading home to relieve the baby-sitter. He nodded at his father-in-law. "Phil."

Swett nodded back. "Leo."

Adelle sighed. "Well, at least the two of you know each other's name.

Leaning over the small table in the inner sanctum off the library of the Abakumov mansion outside of Moscow, matching the numbers on the message to the letters on the grid of the one-time pad, Starik meticulously deciphered the bulletin from his agent in Rome; he didn't want messages dealing with KHOLSTOMER passing through the hands of code clerks. The several sums of US dollars, transferred over the past six months to a Swiss bank from SovGaz and the Soviet Import-Export Cooperative, then speedily paid out to various shell companies in Luxembourg that channeled the money on to the Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest private bank, and finally to the Vatican Bank itself, were accounted for.

Starik burned the enciphered message and the one-time pad in a coal stove, then inserted the deciphered message in the old-fashioned file box with an iron hasp. The words Soversheno Sekretno ("Top Secret") and KHOLSTOMER were written in beautiful Cyrillic script across the oak cover. He placed the box on the shelf of the large safe that was cemented into the wall behind the portrait of Lenin, enabled the destruction mechanism, closed the heavy door and carefully double-locked it at the top and at the bottom with the only existing key, which he kept attached to the wrought silver chain hanging around his neck.

Then he turned his attention to the next message, which the code clerks working in the top floor room-within-a-room had just broken out of its cipher. It had come in marked "Urgent Immediate" fourteen minutes earlier. The clerk who had delivered the deciphered version to Starik mentioned that the Washington rezidentura, using emergency contact procedures, had come on the air outside its regularly scheduled transmissions, which underscored the importance of the matter.

As Starik read through SASHA's brief message—"I wish to God I could help them, but I can't." —his eyes brightened. He reached for the phone and dialed the gatehouse. "Bring my car around to the front door immediately," he ordered.

Starik extracted the last of the hollow-tipped Bulgarian cigarettes from the packet and thrust it between his lips. He crumpled the empty packet and tossed it into the corrugated burn bin on his next turn around the anteroom. One of the half-dozen KGB heavies sitting around on wooden benches reading photo magazines noticed Starik patting his pockets and offered a light. Bending over the flame, Pasha Semyonovich Zhilov sucked the cigarette into life.

'How long have they been at it?" he called across the room to the secretary, a dreary-faced young man wearing goggle-like eyeglasses, who was sitting behind the desk next to the door.

"Since nine this morning," he answered.

'Seven hours," one of the bodyguards grunted.

From behind the shut door of the Politburo conference room came the muffled sound of riotous argument. Every now and then someone would raise his voice and a phrase would be audible: "Simply not possible to give you a written guarantee." "No choice but to support us." "Matter of days at the most." "Weigh the consequences." "If you refuse the responsibility it will be on your head."

Starik stopped in front of the male secretary. "Are you certain he know I am here?"

"I placed your note in front of him. What more can I do?"

"It is vital that I speak to him before a decision is taken," Starik said "Ring through to him on the phone."

"I am under strict instructions not to interrupt—"

"And I am instructing you to interrupt. It will go badly for you if you refuse."

The young man was caught in an agony of indecision. "If you give me another written message, Comrade Colonel General, I can attempt to deliver it in such a way as to ensure that he has read it."

Starik scribbled a second note on a pad and ripped it off. The secretary filled his lungs with air and plunged into the room, leaving the door partly open behind him. "Run unacceptable risks if we do not intervene." "Still recovering from the last war." "Only thing counterrevolutionists understand is force."

The door opened wider and the secretary returned. The round figure of Nikita Sergeyovich Khrushchev materialized behind him. The six heavies lounging around the room sprang to their feet. Starik dropped his cigarette on the floor and stubbed it out with the toe of one of his soft boots.

Khrushchev was in a foul mood. "What the devil is so important that it cannot wait until—"

Starik produced a plain brown envelope from the inside pocket of his long peasant's jacket, pulled several sheets of paper from it and held them out to Khrushchev. "These speak for themselves."

The First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party fitted on a pair of steel-rimmed reading glasses and started to skim the documents. As he finished the first sheet, his thick lips parted. From time to time he would glance up and pose a question.

"How sure are you of the source of these reports?"

"I would stake my life on him."

"These appear to be minutes of a meeting—"

"There was a three-way conversation on a secure telephone line between CIA Director Dulles; his brother, John Foster Dulles, who is recuperating in a Washington hospital; and Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson. A stenographer in the office of CIA Director Dulles recorded the conversation."

Khrushchev chuckled. "I will not ask you how these records came into your possession."

Starik did not smile. "I would not tell you if you did."

Khrushchev bristled. "If I instruct you to tell me, you will tell me."

Starik stood his ground. "I would quit first."

Nikolai Bulganin, the one-time mayor of Moscow who, on Khrushchev's insistence, had been named premier the previous year, appeared at the door behind the First Secretary.

"Nikita Sergeyevich, Marshal Zhukov is pressing for an answer—"

Khrushchev passed the pages he'd already read to Bulganin. "Look through these, Nikolai Aleksandrovich," he ordered crisply. He read through the remaining pages, reread two of them, then looked up. His small eyes danced excitedly in his round face. "The parenthetical observation at the top," he said, lowering his voice, "suggests that these words were spoken in the White House."

Starik permitted himself a faint smile.

Khrushchev showed the last document to Bulganin, then returned the papers to Starik. "My thanks to you, Pasha Semyonovich. Of course, this permits us to assess the situation in a different light." With that, both the First Secretary and the Soviet premier returned to the conference room, closing the door behind them.

The KGB heavies settled back onto the benches. The young secretary breathed a sigh of relief. Behind the thick wooden door the storm seemed to have abated, replaced by the droning of unruffled men moving briskly in the direction of a rational decision.

9

BUDAPEST, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1956

ON THE STAGE OF THE CORVIN CINEMA, AMID A CLUTTER Of orange peels and empty sardine tins and broken ammunition crates and discarded clothing and heaps of mimeographed tracts and assorted weaponry, the players in the drama waited for the curtain to rise on the third act. Half a dozen teenage girls fitted machine gun bullets, smuggled in from a Hungarian Army base the previous night, into cartridge belts as they giggled over boys who had caught their eye. Several older women, sitting in a semicircle under the stage, filled empty beer bottles with petrol and then stuffed cloth wicks into them. In a corner, Zoltan, Ebby's gypsy radioman, sharpened the long curved blade of his father's father's knife on a snakestone, testing it every now and then against the ball of his thumb. A young squad leader, just back from patrolling the Pest bank of the Danube, stripped off his bandolier, leather jacket and knitted sweater and crawled onto a pallet alongside his sleeping girlfriend, a freckle-faced teenager with blonde pigtails; she stirred and turned and buried her head in the boy's neck, and the two whispered for several minutes before falling asleep in each other s arms. In the back of the auditorium Ebby dozed on one of the folding wooden seats, his head propped against a window curtain rolled into a makeshift pillow. Elizabet lay stretched across three seats in the row behind him, a Hungarian Army greatcoat covering her body, a sailor s watch cap pulled over her eyes and ears shutting out the light and sound, but not the tension. Shortly before four in the morning Arpad lumbered through the double door of the theater and looked around. He spotted Ebby and strode across the auditorium to sink wearily onto the seat next to him.

Ebby came awake instantly. "Are the rumors true?" he demanded.

Arpad, his eyes swollen from lack of sleep, nodded gloomily. "You must get the news to your American friends in Vienna. Pal Maleter and the other members of the delegation were invited to continue the negotiations at the Russian command post on the island of Tokol in the Danube. Sometime after eleven last night, Maleter phoned to say everything was in order. An hour later his driver turned up at the Parliament and reported that Maleter and the others had been arrested. The KGB burst into the conference room during a coffee break. Maleter's driver was napping in the cloakroom. In the confusion he was overlooked. Later he managed to slip out a back door. He said the Russian general negotiating with Meleter was furious with the KGB. He'd given him his word as a soldier that the Hungarian delegation would be safe. The leader of the KGB squad took the general aside and whispered something in his ear. The general waved his hand in disgust and stalked out of the room. The KGB threw burlap sacks over the heads of our negotiators and led them away."

"This can only mean one thing," Ebby whispered.

Arpad nodded grimly. "We are betrayed by everyone," he said dully. "There is nothing left for us except to die fighting."

From beyond the thick walls of the Corvin Cinema came the dry thud of cannon fire; it sounded like someone discreetly knocking on a distant door. Somewhere in Pest several artillery shells exploded. Around the auditorium students were climbing to their feet in alarm. A shell burst on Ulloi Avenue, shaking the building. Everyone started talking at once until an Army officer clambered onto a stepladder and shouted for silence. He began issuing orders. Grabbing their weapons, filling their overcoat pockets with Molotov cocktails, the students headed for the exits.

Elizabet was on her feet in the row behind Ebby and Arpad, shivering under the greatcoat pulled over her shoulders like a cape. Clutching her mutilated breast, she listened for a moment to the distant thunder and the explosions. The blood drained from her already pale lips. "What is happening?" she whispered.

Arpad stood up. "The Russians have come back, my dear Elizabet. They have declared war on our revolution." He started to say something else but his voice was lost in the burst of a shell between the Corvin Cinema and the Kilian Barracks across the street. The explosion cut off the electricity. The lights in the cinema blinked out as a fine powdery dust rained down from the ceiling.

Around the auditorium flashlights flickered on. Ebby buttonholed Zoltan and the two of them made their way by flashlight to the makeshift passageway that had been cut in the walls between the Cinema and the adjoining apartment building, and climbed up to the top floor room that had been turned into a radio shack. With the stub of a pencil Ebby started printing out a CRITIC to Vienna Station. "Don't bother enciphering this," he told Zoltan. "The most important thing now is—"

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