Frederick Forsyth - The Deceiver

Kellogg was thanked and dismissed. The DCI stared across the table.

“What do you think, Joe?”

“You know the British think Minstrel’s a phony,” said Roth. “I told you the first time I came what London’s view was.”

The DCI made an irritable gesture of dismissal. “Proof, Joe. You asked them for hard proof. Did they give you any?”

Roth shook his head.

“Did they say they had a high-placed asset in Moscow who had denounced Minstrel?”

“No, sir. Sam McCready denied that.”

“So they’re full of shit,” said the DCI. “They have no proof, Joe—just the loser’s resentment at not having gotten Minstrel to themselves. This is proof, Joe. Pages and pages of it.”

Roth stared dumbly at the papers. To know that he had worked closely with a man who was steadily and with delib­erate malice betraying his country over many years was like having a chunk blown out of his midriff. He felt sick. Quietly he said, “What do you want me to do, sir?”

The DCI rose and paced his elegant library. “I am the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Appointed by the President himself. As such, I am asked to protect this country as best I can and may, from all her enemies. Some within, some without. I cannot and will not go to the President and tell him we have yet another massive scandal that makes all previous treacheries right back to Benedict Arnold look like nickel-and-dime affairs. Not after the recent series of breaches of security.

“I will not expose him to the savaging of the media and the ridicule of foreign nations. There can be no arrest and trial, Joe. The trial has been here, the verdict has been reached, and the sentence must be from me, God help me.”

“What do you want me to do?” repeated Roth.

“In the last analysis, Joe, I could steel myself not to worry about the broken trusts, the traduced secrets, the loss of confidence, the wrecked morale, the scavenging media, the snickering foreign nations. But I cannot expel from my mind the images of the agents blown away, the widows and the orphans. For a traitor, there can be only one verdict, Joe.

“He does not return here, ever. He does not soil this land with his feet ever again. He is consigned to outer darkness. You will return to England, and before he can skip to Vienna and thence across the border into Hungary—which is as­suredly what he has been preparing to do ever since Minstrel came over—you will do what has to be done.”

“I’m not certain I can do that, sir.”

The DCI leaned over the table, and with his hand he raised Roth’s chin so that he stared into the younger man’s eyes. His own were as hard as obsidian.

“You will do it, Joe. Because it is my order as Director, because through our President I speak for this land, and because you will do it for your country. Go back to London and do what has to be done.”

“Yes, sir,” said Joe Roth.

The steamer pulled away from Westminster Pier precisely at three and began its leisurely journey downriver toward Green­wich. A crowd of Japanese tourists lined the rail, cameras clicking like subdued machine-gun fire to record the images of the Houses of Parliament slipping away.

As the boat neared midriver, a man in a light gray suit quietly rose and walked to the stern, where he stood at the rail gazing down into the churning wake. Minutes later an­other man, in a light summer raincoat, rose from a different bench and went to join him.

“How are things at the embassy?” asked McCready quietly.

“Not so good,” said Keepsake. “The fact of a major counterintelligence operation is confirmed. So far, only the behavior of my junior staff is being gone over. But intensively. When they have been cleared, the focus of search will move higher—toward me. I am covering tracks as best I can, but there are some things, losing entire files, that would do more harm than good.”

“How long do you think you’ve got?”

“A few weeks at most.”

“Be careful, my friend. Err on the side of caution. We absolutely do not want another Penkovsky.”

In the early 1960s, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky of the GRU worked for the British for two and a half brilliant years. Until then and for many years afterward, he had been by far the most valuable Soviet agent ever recruited, and the most damaging to the USSR. In his brief span he passed over more than five thousand top-secret documents, culminating in vital intelligence on the Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, informa­tion that enabled President Kennedy to play a masterly hand against Nikita Khrushchev. But he overstayed his time. When urged to come out, he insisted on staying for a few more weeks, was unmasked, interrogated, tried, and shot.

Keepsake smiled. “Don’t worry, no Penkovsky affair. Not again. And how are things with you?”

“Not good. We believe Orlov has denounced Calvin Bailey.”

Keepsake whistled. “That high. Well, well. Calvin Bailey himself. So he was the target of Project Potemkin. Sam, you must persuade them they are wrong, that Orlov is lying.”

“I can’t,” said McCready. “I’ve tried. They’ve got the bit between their teeth.”

“You must try again. There is a life at stake here.”

“You don’t really think—”

“Oh yes, old friend, I do,” said the Russian. “The DCI is a passionate man. I don’t think he can allow another major scandal, bigger than all the rest put together, at this stage in his President’s career. He will take the option of ensuring silence. Forever. But of course, it won’t work. He will think, if the act is done, that it will never get out. We know better, don’t we? The rumors will start quite soon because the KGB will ensure that they start. They are very good at that.

“Ironically, Orlov has already won. If Bailey is arrested and goes on trial, with hugely damaging publicity, he has won. If Bailey is silenced and the news gets out, CIA morale will hit an all-time low and he has won. If Bailey is expelled without pension, he will claim his innocence, and the contro­versy will roll for years. Again, Orlov will have won. You must dissuade them.”

“I have tried. They still think Orlov’s product is immensely valuable and pure. They believe him.”

The Russian stared at the foaming water beneath the stern as the Dockland Redevelopment Area, then still a mass of cranes and part-demolished derelict warehouses, slid past.

“Did I ever tell you of my ashtray theory?”

“No,” said McCready, “I don’t think you did.”

“When I taught at the KGB training school, I told my pupils that you take a cut-glass ashtray and smash it into three pieces. If you recover one piece, you know only that you have a piece of glass. If you recover two, you know you have two-thirds of an ashtray, but you cannot stub out your cigarette. To have the whole and usable article, you need all three pieces of the ashtray.”

“So?”

“So everything Orlov has provided only makes up one or two pieces of a whole range of ashtrays. He has never actually given the Americans a whole ashtray. Something really secret that the USSR has treasured for years and does not want to give away. Ask them to give Orlov an acid test. He will fail it. But when I come out, I will bring the whole ashtray. Then they will believe.”

McCready pondered. Finally he asked, “Would Orlov know the name of the Fifth Man?”

Keepsake thought it over. “Almost certainly, though I do not,” he said. “Orlov spent years in the Illegals Directorate. I never did. I was always PR-Line, operating out of embassies. We have both been in the Memory Room—it is a standard part of the training. But only he would have seen the Black Book. Yes, he will know the name.”