The Disposable Man (23 page)

“Your partner’s portable. I dug her out of her hiding spot. I can tell you people don’t do this for a living.”

“Don’t be a smartass, John. You need us. Who’s the guy we’re supposed to be saving?”

“He’s a defector. The one I mentioned last night that Angleton locked up for two years ’cause he thought he was a plant.”

“Why not call in the cavalry?” I asked.

“It might be the cavalry that’s hunting him.” Rarig’s exasperation was as clear as his voice was becoming loud.

“You’re not going to give me your ‘Snowden’s-the-bad-guy’ spiel again, are you? I’m a little less gullible today.”

“God damn you, Gunther. I’m asking you to help me save a man’s life. That’s supposed to be what the police are for. I don’t know who’s trying to take him out, and I don’t know why, but I’ve got to do what I can. I’ll get you cleared of your legal problems—I’ve got the evidence you want—but I need you now.”

“Give the phone back to Sammie and walk out of earshot.”

I waited a few moments after Sam got back on. “He a safe distance away?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sorry for the screwup.”

“I don’t care about that. He’s right. Snooping on people isn’t our job. What do you think of all this?”

“That you leave the county? You’d be crazy. This creep’s been lying to us since we met him.”

“He sounds genuine now.”

“He looks genuine, but it could all be cock-and-bull, and you’d pay the price big time.”

“Willy called me about the shooting in Middlebury. That part’s legit. How did it come down at your end?”

“I saw him through the window on the phone ten minutes ago. He was pacing back and forth, waving his arm. Then, all of a sudden, he flies out of the house, makes a beeline for me like I was standing in the middle of a road, and demands to talk to you on my phone. He is seriously worked up.”

“This could be the break we’re looking for, Sam.”

I could almost feel her anxiety. “Jesus. It’s all so tied up in knots, who’s to tell? Willy says they use people like Kleenex. It’s a hell of a risk.”

“My other option looks like a dead certainty. Even if Richard gets me off, my career’s toast.”

She was utterly silent for a moment, before pointing out, “Rarig hasn’t said what he wants yet.”

“Put him back on, then.”

A few moments later, Rarig demanded, “Are you in or not?”

“What’s your plan?”

“My God. I hope to hell you’re not on your department’s SWAT team. All your hostages would die of old age.”

“Sam and I are both on the team, and we’re also alive to prove it. What’s your plan?”

“I don’t know yet,” he conceded. “I need to get up there, find him, and get him to safe ground.”

“You sure he’s still in Middlebury?”

“He should be. When we moved him there, he and I picked out a priest hole he could use in an emergency.”

“Is that where he called you from?”

“It doesn’t have a phone. It has a signaling device he’s supposed to trigger when he gets there, but he either didn’t use it or he never arrived. That’s why I want help.”

“All right,” I finally agreed. “I’ll come, but alone. I won’t jeopardize the other two.”

He barely hesitated. “Fine, just get here.”

I DIDN'T FLY OUT OF THE HOUSE
after Rarig’s call for help. If anything, his impatience slowed me down, making me as careful as he seemed to have become impulsive. I packed a bag with every tactical necessity I could think of, including several weapons, and made sure the house was secure before I left. I longed to leave Gail a note and finally settled for a simple “I love you” on the icebox chalkboard, confident that sooner or later she’d see it.

The reason I knew she’d come by—maybe even move back in—was because I was also aware of how my departure would be received. For the violator of court-ordered condition of release to also be a cop compounds the sin exponentially. Any judge would feel the added insult—Harrowsmith more than most. None of which took into account the predictable howl from Fred Coffin’s publicity machine.

Within a half hour of my no-show at the West Brattleboro barracks, a fugitive arrest warrant would be issued statewide, complete with description, photograph, and known contacts. One accidental sighting by a single cop anywhere in Vermont—and there were hundreds who knew me at a glance—would mean attention unlike any I’d ever received before. If Richard Levay thought he’d had a hard case before, he was about to start feeling like Clarence Darrow at the Scopes trial—assuming he didn’t wash his hands of me altogether.

And yet I felt no real trepidation as I set out toward the Windham Hill Inn. What I’d told Sammie had been the absolute truth. As I saw it, this was my only remaining option. It didn’t matter if Rarig was lying about clearing my name. It didn’t matter if we failed to locate his terrified defector. I wasn’t entirely sure it mattered if nothing turned out as anyone was expecting. The point now was simply to create some random, spontaneous action—a move so utterly against my character that it would fall outside the boundaries imagined by whoever had set me up. As I saw it, I had to knock at least a single support beam to the ground and hope the whole structure followed suit.

These reflections so occupied my mind that when I reached the Windham Hill Inn and saw Rarig and Sammie waiting for me, it felt like I’d just hung up on them.

That impression was not shared by John Rarig. “You took long enough,” he barked at me, pulling open my door.

I didn’t bother responding. Grabbing a small canvas bag from the backseat, I asked, “Which one’s your car?”

Sammie was watching me nervously. “You think this through?”

I gave her a half smile, following Rarig’s pointed finger toward a dark green Ford Explorer. “The point is not to think—surprise the opposition into reacting.”

She fell into step beside me. “You’ll need backup.”

“Maybe, but you won’t be it. I don’t need your busted career on my conscience—if it isn’t too late already.”

She jerked a thumb at Rarig, who was circling the car to get behind the wheel. “If he clears you, I’ll be cleared, too.”

I opened the back door and threw my bag inside. “Nice try, Sam. You already told me you thought he was full of shit.”

She opened her mouth to say more, but I held up my hand. “Don’t. Besides, I need you to stick your neck out in another way. If they find my car here, it won’t take ’em long to start looking for Rarig.”

“Right,” she agreed, caught off guard.

“So ditch it somewhere and cross your fingers. Okay?”

The logic spoke for itself, but her voice was tinged with both sadness and longing. “Okay. Good luck.”

I swung into the seat next to Rarig. “You, too. And promise me you and Willy will work together to cover your asses. I want you both employed when I get back.”

I looked through the rear window as Rarig headed down the driveway. Sammie was standing in the parking lot, her hands by her sides, looking as vulnerable as a lost child in a bus station. I knew it was both momentary and misleading—that cool and decisive action would soon reassert itself—but in that brief moment, I was struck by the loyalty of the friendship between us and hoped to hell I hadn’t burned her by proximity.

· · ·

I waited until we’d gotten onto Route 30, heading north toward Middlebury, before I asked my still visibly tense driver, “Not that you’ll tell me the truth, but who is it we’re trying to save?”

He gave me a startled look. “You don’t believe me? Then why are you here?”

“Personal reasons. Who is it?”

“His name’s Lewis Corbin-Teich—at least that’s what he goes by now. His old name’s not important.”

“Who made that one up? A committee?”

Rarig actually laughed. “No. He did. Like you said, personal reasons. He’s a sentimental man. I just asked him to come up with something that couldn’t be traced back to him or members of his family. That’s what he chose.”

“And he works at the college?” I was watching Rarig’s hands on the wheel, the blanching of his knuckles. A field operative once, and obviously used to tension, he’d apparently lost the instinct over time. I hoped a little conversation would calm him down, for both our sakes.

“Yes. The language department. Russian’s very big at Middlebury. There’s a huge immigrant population there, a Russian/U.S. think tank, a refugee housing complex for Bosnians, lots of conferences and meetings throughout the year. That’s why he fit in from the start.”

“Weren’t you worried someone would recognize him?”

“His own mother probably wouldn’t. He wears a full beard, and he’s had plastic surgery. He’s just another guy with an accent now.”

“You said Angleton locked him up and dismissed everything he had to offer. What happened after that?”

He paused to pass a slower driver on an inside curve, thankfully with no ill effects. “Two years later, other sources confirmed what he’d told us. Angleton never admitted being wrong, but he let him out—it was as close to an apology as you could get. Unfortunately, it also meant Lew was useless to us. I’m the one who came up with the teaching idea, set up the contacts, established the cover, and got him tucked away. The way we’d treated him was no different from what the Soviets did, but no one seemed to pick up on that. They were all hot to move on to the next item on the list.”

He slid off the road slightly, spitting gravel up into the wheel wells. “Lew was so calm about the whole thing it almost made me suspicious. I would’ve hired a lawyer and sued their pants off, but he didn’t care. Said he was just as happy he hadn’t had to sell out his native land for his adopted one, and that the two years had given him lots of time to learn the language and love the region.”

“He was locked up around here?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah. In Vermont. We had a mountaintop radar installation back then—this was in the late fifties. It was very secluded, well guarded, manned by U.S. service people. Perfect safe house for us. Lew was free to roam sometimes, always with a guard, and he got to know the woods and animals and seasons like a native, even though Angleton would push a button in Washington now and then and have him confined to solitary.”

“Why?”

“No reason. Something would happen on the other side of the world—like maybe one of our agents would get caught and tortured—and revenge would be taken out on Lew.”

It’s been said that police officers—in a world where the most mundane traffic stop may lead to a gun battle—have to be slightly paranoid to survive. I wondered how much worse that must be for those inhabiting the smoke-and-mirrors world of intelligence gathering. It had to elevate paranoia to a whole new level and stamp those in its clutches with a permanent imprint.

I tried getting my thoughts back on course. “If Lew meant so little to you people, why kill him now?”

“I don’t know. There was a connection between Padzhev, Antonov, Lew Corbin-Teich, and me, but it’s ancient history, and I can’t see why it’s resurfaced.”

“Did Snowden play into it?”

“No. This was before his time.” Rarig had come up onto another slower driver and was hanging back about two feet from his bumper. I could see the driver’s silhouette as he repeatedly checked his rearview mirror.

“If we are entering a tactical situation,” I said mildly, “you might want to start thinking about being alive when we get there.”

He completely surprised me by suddenly applying the brakes and pulling over. “You’re right. You drive.”

Back on the road, I looked over at his profile as he stared out straight ahead. “You feeling all right?” I asked.

“Fine. I don’t like to drive.”

“I don’t guess anyone else likes your doing it, either.”

I didn’t get a response, aside from a slight tightening of his jaw.

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” I then said.

He didn’t answer at first but turned away to look out the side window. We were on Route 100 by now, having abandoned 30 to cut up through Londonderry and Rutland to reach Middlebury more directly. I didn’t press him, sensing my last words were still being digested.

Eventually, he said softly, “Yeah—long time.”

“What’s going on inside you, John?” I asked. “I’d kind of like to know before things get hot.”

His eyes narrowed as he looked at me. “I’m not going to fall apart, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Wouldn’t you be, in my shoes?”

He gave me a rueful smile. “Okay. I thought I was free of this kind of thing, that’s all. It’s been a little strange—first Antonov, now Corbin-Teich. Whoever said you can’t go home again was out of his mind.”

“Lew must mean something special to you.”

He went back to staring into some unseen middle distance. “A man comes to you one day, out of the blue, and volunteers to trade all he knows for asylum. He’s up and coming in the KGB, protégé of an influential colonel. He’s building connections, receiving favors, in line for a driver and a dacha and all the other capitalist treats the Communists pretend don’t exist. His wife loves it, his kid’s getting a good education, and yet he asks you to pull him out. Even in a non-cynical world, you’d have to ask yourself, ‘Why?’ ”

I ventured a wild guess. “The colonel was Padzhev?”

“Yeah. He and Antonov, like Batman and Robin, since Antonov was always the go-fer. Lew was their latest project. But their enthusiasm had blinded them to his growing disenchantment. To them, it was a great game—Padzhev was a chess fanatic—but Lew kept looking beyond the job, to a corrupt society of un-admitted haves and have-nots, to the lie of equal opportunity and total employment. Not that our system was that much better. But as he saw it, we weren’t hypocritical about it, and we were pretty much free to try to do something to change it.

“I didn’t believe him at first. Angleton would’ve been proud. I thought for sure he was trying to pull a fast one on us. He gave us some information—to show good faith—and it checked out, but of course it would, so that didn’t weigh much. But the more time I spent with him—the more I listened to him talk—the more I came to think he was the real McCoy. And with that I realized what he was proposing to give up.”

Rarig shifted in his seat and stared at me intently. “Over that span of time, to me Lew Corbin-Teich turned from a prize catch into a hero of sorts. The irony was, of course, that I was totally alone there. My colleagues ended up thinking he was a born liar, and his countrymen labeled him a traitor and put a price on his head.