The Company: A Novel of the CIA (84 page)

"Which brings me to the serial that I've kept on a back burner now for thirteen years." Angleton's mask of a face twisted into an anguished smile; his dark eyes seemed to be laughing at some long-forgotten joke. "Thirteen years! You need the patience of a saint to breed orchids. It can take twelve months for the seedpod to develop, another year or two for the seed to grow as big as your thumb. The flowering, if there is a flowering, could take another five years, even eight or ten. Counterintelligence is like that—you nurture seeds in small jars for years, you keep the temperature moist and hot, you hope the seeds will flower one day but there's no guarantee. And all the while you hear the voices whispering behind your back. Mother's obsessed, they say. He's paranoid, they say. Mother is a conclusion searching for confirmatory evidence." Angleton shivered again and chewed on his lower lip. "Believe me, I heard every word. And every word hurt."

Colby tried to gently nudge Angleton back on track. "The fifth serial, Jim."

"The... fifth... serial," Angleton said, dolling out the words as if he had decided to toy with his audience. "In 1961 the FBI stumbled across an old Communist named Max Cohen who had gone underground twenty years earlier. You recall the incident, don't you. Bill? Cohen, using the alias Kahn set up a wine and beverage store in Washington. Kahn provided the perfect front for the Soviet cutout who lived above the store and delivered liquor to hundreds of clients in the Washington area. The cutout went by the name of Dodgson, which, curiously, happened to have been the real name of Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland; it makes you wonder if the KGB spymaster who ran Philby, who runs SASHA, isn't, like Dodgson, creating worlds within worlds within worlds for us to get lost in." Angleton shut his eyes and appeared to meditate for a moment before going on. "When the FBI searched Kahn's store they discovered ciphers and microfilms, a microdot reader, wads of cash bound in rubber bands and a shortwave radio, all of it hidden under the floorboards in Dodgson's closet. Dodgson himself somehow slipped through the FBI's fingers when they arrested Kahn and a female employee. But I never forgot him. Not for a moment. All these years. Nurturing the seeds, keeping the temperature moist and hot, hoping against hope that the seeds would burst into flower." His voice trailed off and a glazed look came into his eyes.

Colby tugged on the rein again. "The fifth serial?"

"The fifth serial... I checked Kahn's invoices for the previous ten years and discovered that, at one point in the early fifties, Dodgson had been delivering liquor to"—Angleton spit out the words—"my former colleague Adrian Philby; I myself was at Adrian's house one evening when Dodgson brought over two bottles of Lagavulin Malt Whisky. At the time, of course, it seemed perfectly natural and I thought nothing of it. Only now do I understand how close I was to..." The sentence trailed off. Angleton shook his head in frustration. "With Philby gone," he plunged on, "it seemed logical to suppose that this same Dodgson would act as the cutout for Philby's replacement; for SASHA." Angleton reached into a jacket pocket and extracted a pack of cigarettes, which he set on the table. The sight of the cigarettes seemed to revive him. "Checking through Kahn's clients who had been on the receiving end of deliveries during the previous ten years, I was able to identify the names of one hundred and sixty-seven full-time Company employees and sixty-four contract employees."

Jack jumped ahead. "You matched the Kahn client list against the twenty-three names you teased out of the Kukushkin serials."

"It seemed too good to be true," Angleton admitted. "And it was. None of the names on Kahn's delivery list matched any of the twenty-three names derived from Kukushkin's four serials."

"It sounds as if you reached another dead end after all," Colby said.

Angleton extracted a cigarette from the pack and turned it in his fingers.

"Oh, I may have looked like a dead end to the ordinary eye. But not to mine. I knew the identity of SASHA was buried there—somewhere in the overlap of he two lists." He clamped the cigarette between his chapped lips without lighting it. "Last weekend," he continued, his voice a throaty growl, the unlit cigarette twitching on his lower lip, "I overheard my wife on the phone making hotel reservations for us in New Haven—Cicely and I were going up to attend a Robert Lowell reading at Yale. As a security precaution—we don't want the opposition keeping track of my movements, do we? —I always have my wife make reservations or purchases using her maiden name. And all of a sudden it hit me—my God, how did I miss it?—SASHA could have had a wife. To put as much distance between himself and Dodgson, he could have had his wife order the liquor from Kahn's using her maiden name. With this in mind I sent my people back to the drawing boards. We checked the maiden names of the wives of the twenty-three people we teased out of Kukushkin's serials, and then went back to Kahn's clients—to the people the cutout Dodgson had delivered liquor to between the hasty departure of Philby and Kahn's arrest ten years later."

By now everyone in the room was hunched forward, their eyes fixed on Angleton s lips almost as if they expected to see the name emerging from his mouth before they could hear it.

"And?" Colby whispered.

"The only maiden name that turned up on both lists was... Swett," Angleton said.

Both Jack and Ebby recognized the name instantly. "Adelle Swett is Philip Swett's daughter," Jack said.

"And Leo Kritzky's wife," Angleton murmured.

"You're way off base, Jim—" Ebby started to say.

"Are you suggesting that Leo Kritzky is SASHA?" Jack demanded incredulously.

Manny said, "This has got to be a blind alley—"

Jack's palm came down hard on the table. "I've known Leo since Yale. We crewed together. We roomed together. He's the godfather of my boy. I'd stake my life on him—"

Angleton produced a lighter and brought the flame to the tip of the cigarette. He inhaled deeply and let the smoke stream from his nostrils. "You don't want to do that, Jack. You'd lose it."

Colby scratched at the stubble on his cheek, deep in thought. "How can y0u be sure that the Swett who ordered liquor at Kahn's wasn't Adelle's father, Philip Swett?"

"Or anyone else named Swett," Jack snapped.

The fix of nicotine had soothed Angleton; the shivering had let up a hint of color had seeped back into his skin. Even his voice was stronger. "Question of addresses," he explained. "In the early fifties Dodeson delivered the Swett order to an apartment on Bradley Lane behind the Clic Chase Club, which is where Kritzky lived when he married Adelle. Starting in 1954 the Swett order was delivered to the small house on Jefferson in Georgetown, which Philip Swett purchased for his daughter when his granddaughters were born."

"I'm at a loss for words," Colby admitted. "I'm staggered. If ... true... good God, if Leo Kritzky has been spying for the Soviets all these years, do you realize what it means? He was in on Wisner's roll-back strategy in the early fifties—he would have known about all of the Wiz's Soviet-targeted ops. Kritzky knew about your mission to Budapest, Eb. He was Bissell's ADD/O/A during the Bay of Pigs business—he knew the time and place of the landings, he knew the Brigade's order of battle, he knew which ships were loaded with munitions and fuel. The possibility that the man who's running the Soviet Division might be a KGB mole..."

"It happened before," Angleton reminded Colby. "Don't forget that Philby ran MI6's anti-Soviet counterintelligence show after the war."

Colby thought of something else. "His wife, Swett's daughter Adelle, was a White House legislative aide during the Johnson Presidency. Imagine the inside stuff he could have gotten from her! It makes me sick to my stomach."

"I'm not buying into this," Ebby announced. "Leo's a loyal American—"

Angleton, puffing away on his cigarette, seemed to grow calmer as the others became agitated. "It all fits like the pieces of an elaborate puzzle," he said. "Leo Kritzky is a Russian speaker whose last name begins with K. In September of 1972 he vacationed in Nova Scotia for two weeks. On a number of occasions the cutout Dodgson—who had delivered liquor to Philby address on Nebraska Avenue—also delivered liquor to a client named Swett, who turns out to be Kritzky s wife." Angleton concentrated on Colby. "The evidence is overwhelming. Bill. Kritzky's due back from a two-week bicycle trip in France on Sunday afternoon—"

"Jesus," Manny exclaimed from his end of the table. He was horrified at the conclusion Angleton had drawn from the Æ/PINNACLE serials. "What are you going to do, arrest him?"

"That seems like the obvious place to start," Angleton remarked.

"The evidence is circumstantial," Jack insisted. "The case is full of holes. It won't hold water when we take a closer look at it."

Colby doodled another circle into the chain on his yellow pad. "We'd have to be horses' asses not to take a closer look at it," he decided. "Let's not forget that Æ/PINNACLE is out there on a limb—if Kritzky is SASHA, we can't afford to let him back into Langley." He turned to Angleton. "The ball's in your court, Jim. Run with it."

Jack blurted out, "Damnation, Bill, you're giving him a blank check."

Angleton gathered up his papers. "This isn't a garden party, gentlemen."

Colby said, "A blank check, within limits."

Jack said, "Whose limits?"

Manny rang again. When nobody answered, he tried the door of Nellie's top-floor loft. It was unlocked. He stuck his head inside. "Anybody home?" he called. "Nellie, you there?" He went in, kicked the door closed and looked around. The long, narrow living room was aglow with flickering candlelight. Sheets of typing paper, each with a bare footprint traced on it, were set out on the floorboards. With a laugh, Manny followed the footprints and wound up in front of a not-quite-closed door at the end of the corridor. On the floor in front of it was an open bottle of Dom Perignon in a silver bucket filled with crushed ice, and two glasses. He eased the door open with an elbow. Candles set into two candelabras bathed the misty room in sulfurous hues. Stretched languorously in a bathtub filled with steaming water was Nellie; only her head and a single toe broke the surface. Overhead, a three-quarters moon could be seen through the condensation on the skylight. "You're ten minutes late," she announced in a throaty whisper. "The ice was starting to melt. Me, too."

"For Christ's sake, Nellie—"

"I'm not naked as a jaybird for Christ's sake, I'm doing this for your sake." She grinned lewdly at him. "So why don't you slip into something more comfortable, like your birthday suit, and we'll guzzle Champagne in the tub while you try to fend off my advances."

Manny filled the two glasses with Champagne and handed one to her as he settled onto the edge of the tub. He looked down at her body. Her brown nipples and blonde pubic hair were visible under the crystal-clear water.

Nellie sipped her Champagne. "So what do you think are my physical flaws?" she inquired. "Be brutal. Don't be afraid to hurt my feelings."

Manny toyed with the stem of his glass. "Your nose is too big, for atarters. Your nipples are too prominent, your thighs are too thin, too girl-like as opposed to woman-like, your shoulders are too bony, your pubic hair is too sparse—"

"I pluck it, dodo, so it won't show when I climb into my yellow-polka-dot bikini."

"Your pubis looks like a teenage girl's—there's no meat on your pelvic bone. Your feet are too gangly, your eyes are set too far apart, your belly button is too conspicuous..." His voice grew thicker. "Your skin in the moonlight is gorgeous, your body takes my breath away..."

"Come on in," she murmured, "I'll give you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation "

Manny gulped down some of his drink. "You don't leave a guy much room to maneuver."

"You don't have to look so grim about it. Elizabet says working for the Company can be dangerous for your mental health. I talked to her on the phone tonight—Mom said your father came back from the office looking like death warmed over; looking pretty much the way you look now, come to think of it. You guys have problems?"

"We always have problems," Manny said vaguely.

"Want to share them?"

"Can't."

"Try."

He shook his head.

"Give me a hint. Is the earth going to collide with an asteroid? Are the Russians going to launch a preemptive first strike? Is Congress going to reduce your budget by a billion or two?"

"Psychologically speaking, all of the above and then some. Someone I know—someone I like and respect—is in trouble..." He let the sentence trail off.

"Is it going to spoil our night together?"

"There isn't going to be a night together, Nellie. That's what I came to tell you. I thought you'd understand if I told you in person... Do you understand?

Nellie polished off her Champagne and thrust it out for a refill. She gulped that down, too, then splashed out of the tub. Wrapping herself in an enormous white towel, she stomped from the bathroom. Carrying the bottle, Manny followed her wet footprints. "So how do you expect a girl to understand when you don't say anything?" she fumed, flinging herself onto a couch, her legs spread wide, the towel parting to reveal a bony hip and a white thigh.

Manny said, "Look, I need to be somewhere in three quarters or an hour. It's an all-hands-on-deck situation. I'd stay and talk some more—"

"—if you could, but you can't."

Manny set the bottle down at her feet. He bent over to kiss her but she leaned away.

"I was just getting used to the idea that you had a crush on me," he said.

"I don't have a crush on you, Manny. I love you."

"Right now you look as if you hate me."

She turned back to him. "I hate the part of you I don't love."

"I'll call as soon as I can."

"Do that. Just don't think I'll be satisfied with the crumbs you throw my way. I want a whole loaf, Manny. That or nothing."

The Air France Airbus touched down at Dulles International minutes after four in the afternoon. Leo and Adelle, stiff from the long flight, queued at the passport control counter, then tugged two bags off the conveyor belt and made their way down the "Nothing to Declare" passageway toward the exit. They could see Vanessa waving to them from behind the glass partition.