The Company: A Novel of the CIA (80 page)

Manny studied the Russian. He was forty-five, give or take a few years, of medium height, handsome in a rough way with the heavy shoulders and thick body of a wrestler. His gaze was straightforward and unwavering. The only outward sign of uneasiness was his habit of flicking the nail of his middle finger back and forth against his thumbnail.

Manny had the queasy feeling that he was dealing with a professional. He switched back to Russian. "Agatha said you were a political attache..."

Kukushkin produced a sour grin. "Political attache is my diplomatic cover. My real name is Klimov. Sergei Klimov. I have temporary rank of captain in KGB." The Russian's fingernails clicked like a metronome. "To speak openly, I was expecting the meeting to be with someone more senior. You are too young. If I need brain surgery I would not want a young surgeon." He added in English, "Same reasonment is holding true for spies."

"I'm senior enough to deal with this, I promise you. You want to give me a brief rundown on your background?"

Kukushkin nodded reluctantly. "My pedagogic background is study of capitalist political model. Before assignment in Washington I was attached to Directorate S of the First Chief Directorate, which is responsible for running KGB officers and agents operating abroad under deep cover. During that assignment many many cables passed through my hands. Arrived Washington fourteen months ago. Principal job in Washington is analyzing relationship between your White House and the two branches of your Congress. Seven months remain on normal tour, though sometimes it is stretching to two and a half, three years if SK agree."

"You want to come over to our side?" Manny said carefully.

"I want political asylum in America." The Russian looked as if he were about to throw up. "For me," Kukushkin added. "For my wife. For mv seven-years daughter."

"Why?"

"I do not understand your why."

"What made you decide to come over?"

"Look, I understand motive is important so you can make judgment if I am genuine or false defector, but we are not having much time for this tonight. I will say you that one of ironies of Cold War is that KGB operatives, especially those who have been posted to the West, have a better understanding of the capitalist world's strengths and weaknesses than average Russian. I am living proof of this. I am disillusioned with corruption, with inefficiency of our Soviet Socialist model. I believe in Mother Russia, not Soviet Russia." Kukushkin leaned forward and spoke with stifled passion. "I will say you honestly there exists another reason. My wife is heart sick—she was taking medicine before many years. She is treated by Russian doctor at embassy. I want to have her American doctor and American medicine."

"How long have you been disillusioned?"

One of Kukushkin's large hands floated off his lap, palms up. "Disillusion is something not growing like mushroom over one night. Many, many years it grows until your brain and your heart are poisoned."

"Were you disillusioned when you arrived in Washington fourteen months ago? Was your wife in need of medical help when you came here?"

The Russian nodded warily; he wasn't sure where this line of questioning was leading.

Manny pushed himself to the edge of the chair. "Why didn't you come over fourteen months ago?"

Kukushkin's gaze wavered from Manny's for the first time. "Ne vozmozhno!" he said, lowering his voice and uttering the words with great intensity.

Manny persisted. "Why was it impossible?"

His nails clicking into the silence, the Russian considered the question for a moment. "KGB rezident in Washington, Borisov, is schoolmate front Lomonosov University—for two years we roomed together. Rezident is very open with me, telling me many things when we drink whiskey in his office late at night. From him I know that KGB has what you call a mole inside your CIA with code name SASHA. This SASHA, he is having very important position—" one of Kukushkin's thick hands measured off rungs on a ladder— "somewhere high up in your organization. Impossible to come over when SASHA in Washington—he would be one of first in CIA to find out, he would alarm our SK people. The Russian trying to come over, his family"— he slashed a forefinger across his throat—"kaput."

Assuming Kukushkin was the real McCoy, Manny knew that he had gotten his hands on a gold nugget. "Are you saying that SASHA is not in Washington?"

The Russian nodded grimly. "Borisov is telling me that both SASHA and his cutout are out of the city."

Manny asked quietly, "Can you identify SASHA?"

Kukushkin's fingernails fell silent. "I do not think even rezident knows his identity, only that he exists. But you already know that SASHA is not in Washington. I am able provide other particulars... I am able to say you another time when he is not in Washington. I am able to say you the first initial of his family name, along with one other important biographical detail. In return for political asylum for me, for my family, I am ready to help you narrow list of suspects."

"You two know each other?" the DCI, Bill Colby, asked as the Company's legendary chief of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton, carefully folded his brittle body into a chair at the head of the table.

"We've never met," Angleton murmured.

Jack McAuliffe did the honors. "This is Manny Ebbitt—one of the rising stars in the Soviet Division."

"It's a honor to meet you, Mr. Angleton," Manny volunteered.

Angleton peered down the table at Manny, fixing his brooding Mexican eyes on him. "So you're Elliott's boy," he said.

From his place alongside Colby, Ebby remarked testily, "Yes, he is."

"Everyone has a cross to bear," Jack quipped, hoping to lighten the atmosphere. Nobody smiled.

Suppressing a chain-smokers hacking cough, Angleton bent his head and lit a cigarette from the stump of another that had burned down to his dehydrated lips. "I'd like to get started," he said impatiently. "I'm supposed t0 be briefing the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board at eleven."

Manny was more than a little intimidated to be in the presence of the institutional legend who went by the in-house code name of Mother. For more than twenty years Angleton had kept his lonely vigil, turning over stones and looking for worms of treason; he traced every operational failure to the presence of a Soviet mole inside the Company, every operational success to Starik's diabolical efforts to advance the mole's career. In Manny's Soviet Division, people spoke about Mother in hushed tones. Someone would brag of having caught a glimpse of him in a corridor, a drawn, hunched specter prowling Langley with his hands clasped behind his back and a faraway gleam in his eyes. Scuttlebutt had it that Angleton was past his prime, living on borrowed time, incapable after a four-martini lunch of working his way through the mountain of cables and files heaped on his desk. At regular topsider staff meetings on the seventh floor of what Company hands now called the "Campus," Angleton was said to rant about his latest theory. One week he would claim that the Sino-Soviet split and the seeming independence of Dubcek in Czechoslovakia or Ceaucescu in Rumania or Tito in Yugoslavia were the dirty work of KGB disinformation specialists trying to lure the West into thinking the Soviet monolith was breaking up. Another time he would ramble on about how his nemesis, Philby, who fled to Moscow in the early 1960s after finally having been exposed as a Soviet spy, had recast the posture and character of the Soviet intelligence service. Under Philby's stewardship, Angleton would claim, it had become more subtle; more stiletto than blunderbuss. Angleton went so far as to see Philby's handiwork when KGB operatives traded in their easy-to-spot baggy trousers and wide cuffs for tailored suits. Inside the Company, there were caustic complaints that Angleton's paranoid hunt for moles had paralyzed Soviet ops; that he'd hurt the Company more than any Soviet mole could. Angleton still had his defenders, though their ranks seemed to thin out with each passing year. Every intelligence organization needed a resident paranoid, they would argue; Angleton was the Company's. And the fact that he hadn't uncovered a single Soviet mole inside the CIA didn't mean there wasn't one.

Colby sat back and crossed his legs and regarded Manny over his eyeglasses. "Why don't you begin," he said.

"Yes, sir. I received the phone call from the woman named Ept, Agatha at approximately nine thirty-two—"

"Nine thirty would be approximately," Angleton remarked. "Nine thirty-two is precisely."

Manny looked up from his notes, the faintest of smiles pasted on his lips. "I take your point, sir. The Ept woman claimed to work for the US Patent Office, a fact I was able to verify—"

"You were able to verify that someone named Ept, Agatha, was on the Patent Office payroll," Angleton interjected. "You did not verify, nor, as far as I know, have you verified, that the woman claiming to be Ept, Agatha, was in fact the same Ept, Agatha employed by the US Patent Office."

Ebby kept his mouth shut. Colby glanced at Angleton. "You're nitpicking, Jim. Why don't we let him finish."

"Nitpicking is what I do for a living, Bill," Angleton said.

It was clear there was no love lost between the two men, and for good reason. Soon after he became DCI in 1973 Colby had terminated one of Angleton's pet operations, code named HT/LINGUAL, which had his counterintelligence people reading all first-class mail to and from the Soviet Union that passed through New York; Colby had argued that the CIA's charter prohibited operations inside the continental United States. Adding injury to insult, the Director had whittled away at Angleton's empire, reducing his staff from three hundred to eighty. Now, the Director eyed his counterintelligence chief. "Do me a favor, Jim," he told him. "Nitpick on your own time and in your own shop." Colby turned back to Manny and nodded.

"A Russian political attache that Ept had met at a Smithsonian reception weeks before had turned up at her door."

Angleton closed his eyes and puffed on the cigarette. "Ept has an unlisted phone. How did the Russian know where she lived?"

Jack caught Ebby's eye and signalled with a palm for him to simmer down.

Manny looked directly at Angleton. "Ept told me on the phone that she had met the Russian for lunch at the Kennedy Center a week ago Sunday. When I asked him directly how he managed to turn up at her door, given that her phone was unlisted, he claimed that he knew her address because he had followed her home after the lunch."

Ebby said coldly, "That explains that."

Manny wondered if all topside meetings were this nerve racking. "Jack here—Mr. McAuliffe—gave me verbal authorization to proceed with the initial meeting. I interviewed the Russian, whom I assigned the random cryptonym Æ-slant-PINNACLE, in the living room of Ept's apartment near Rockville. Ept was not present during the meeting. The Russian specifically asked me not to record the conversation."

Angleton looked up. "SOP for dispatched agents. The people who sent him over don't want me nitpicking before you swallow the bait."

"For Christ's sake, Jim, Manny went by the book," Ebby blurted out. "A genuine defector is putting his life on the line. He's bound to be skittish. It's SOP to go along with his wishes as long as security isn't compromised."

"Thank you for this illuminating instruction on how to handle defectors," Angleton said in a flat voice.

Colby said grimly, "Manny, I'd take it as a favor if you would go on with your presentation."

"Yes, sir. Æ/PINNACLE identified himself as a Soviet political attache named Kukushkin, Sergei Semyonovich, on assignment in Washington to monitor the relationship between the White House and Congress. He quicklv got around to telling me that he was really a temporary captain in the KGB named Klimov, Sergei"—Manny turned to another page of his notes— "who, in addition to his political attache duties, works on general assignment for the rezidentura. I consulted the 201 in Central Registry early this morning. We have a file on a Klimov, Sergei, born 1927, which would make him forty-seven, which matches Kukushkin's appearance. According to our 201, Klimov, Sergei, successfully completed a four-year course at Lomonosov University in Moscow; he passed the Marxist-Leninism boilerplate course with a three out of possible five and graduated with honors in comparative political models. His wrote his senior thesis on the American republican model and the system of checks and balances between the various branches of government. At the end of the four-year course, graduates routinely appear before selection committee composed of representatives from various departments and ministries—Foreign Affairs, Trade, the Trade Unions, TASS, KGB, GRU, what have you. Klimov must have been selected by the KGB, because the next time we see him he's working for the First Chief Directorate, analyzing American signal intercepts that deal with the political situation, as well as political articles in the American press and magazines. At some point during this tour he married the daughter of an Artillery colonel-general who was area commander of intercontinental ballistic missiles bases in Kazakhstan. Curiously, there is no mention in our 201 of the birth of a daughter, though if she is seven, as Æ/PINNACLE told me, she would have been born around this time. Klimov was next posted to Directorate S—which, as you know, runs Soviet illegals abroad—after which we lose track of him. The man claiming to be Klimov told me he had worked for Directorate S of the First Chief Directorate. If we decide to go back at him we can prepare questions to confirm this—ask him to pick out from lists the names of classmates at Lomonosov University, as well as colleagues and superiors who worked with him in Directorate S."

Angleton sat there slowly shaking his head.

Colby asked, "What's wrong now, Jim?"

"If your Kukushkin is a genuine defector, which is extremely unlikely, he will know the answers to these questions. If he is a dispatched agent he will also know the answers. The fact that he knows the answers tells us nothing."

Jack teased his Cossack mustache with a forefinger. "Jim's right, of course," he observed. He turned to Manny. "What reason did Kukushkin/Klimov give for wanting to cross over?"