Alex Berenson: The Secret Soldier

The CIA had promised a five-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to Robinson’s arrest. The FBI and CIA websites and U.S. embassies displayed his photo and the reward offer. The agency’s best hope was that a tourist would recognize Robinson or that someone who knew him would betray him for the money. Indeed, tipsters had reported spotting Robinson everywhere from Paris to Beijing to Wrigley Field. But none of the sightings panned out.

The investigation had not been closed. It never would be. Robinson’s crimes were too serious for the agency and the FBI to give up on him. Officially, anyway. But after three years without a lead, only four agents were assigned to the case full-time. They spent most days asking local police forces to chase tips. They no longer monitored the phone calls or mail sent to his ex-wife, Janice.

SO THEY NEVER SAW the postcard that dropped through the slot of Janice’s front door in Vienna, Virginia, a few miles from the agency’s headquarters. On the front, a photo of a six-foot-long marijuana cigarette on a beach towel. And four words: “Getting baked in Jamaica.” On the back, a phone number. No signature, no explanation.

Janice hoped the card wasn’t what she thought it was. Suddenly she was thirsty, an itch in her brain as real as a spider bite. She could almost feel the welt. She didn’t have any booze in the house, of course. But she knew every liquor store in Fairfax County. Didn’t have to be hard alcohol. She could have a glass or two of wine. To relax. A bottle. One bottle wouldn’t kill her.

She raised her shirt, looked down at the scar where the George Washington University surgeons had given her a new liver. She’d lost the old one to cirrhosis before she turned forty. Wouldn’t kill her? She might as well put a gun in her mouth. Be quicker and hurt less. She tore the postcard into pieces so small it looked like she’d run it through a shredder. Her hands ached when she was finished. She threw the pieces into the garbage disposal and went to the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting she could find.

THE SECOND CARD CAME three months later. This one had a photo of Bob Marley above the words “Don’t worry, be happy.” A phone number. Janice couldn’t remember if it was the same one that was on the first card.

This time she didn’t panic. She made herself a pot of coffee and sat on her couch and stared at Bob Marley. She couldn’t pretend now. It was Eddie. At the agency he’d gone by Keith, but his middle name was Edward. She’d called him Eddie, and she’d always think of him as Eddie. Anyway, it was him. Had to be.

She’d hoped he was dead. A couple of the FBI guys had told her, he’s dead. You can’t run like the old days. We post his picture on the Web, everybody in the world sees it. If he were still alive, someone would have told us. She never believed them. Eddie was too much of a snake to die. A cockroach. Didn’t the scientists say that cockroaches would outlast everybody? He’d dragged her down inch by inch, drop by drop, and she’d let him.

No. She wouldn’t blame him. After their son Mark died, she’d stopped caring about anything but her own misery. Every day dawned grayer than the one before until the sun stopped rising and the night was eternal. Eddie seeped away in the darkness like smoke. So she wouldn’t blame him for what she’d done to herself. But she wouldn’t forgive him, either. He was a whoremonger and a spy. He’d betrayed his country. Four men, at least, had died for his sins.

She’d felt so stupid the night she found out. How could she not have known? The early-morning walks. The piles of cash. Poor Eddie. Always frustrated with the agency. Stuck in a dead-end job working ounterintelligence when he wanted so much to be in a foreign post. Always so sure that his talents were wasted.

She had to admit it seemed obvious in retrospect.

After Eddie left, the FBI moved her to a hotel, a Marriott in Alexandria. And they made sure that she had plenty of wine in the room. They weren’t even subtle about it. They brought in Costco bags filled with bottles. For a couple days she was grateful. Then, finally, she realized just how far she’d fallen. The FBI was afraid if she stopped drinking she’d go into withdrawal.

A week later, she quit. She woke up and reached for the bottle on the bedside table and thought, I can’t do this anymore. She wasn’t sure at first whether this meant drinking or living, but then some part of her decided she wasn’t ready to give up yet. In a day, she had the shakes so bad that the agents called 911. She wound up in thirty-day rehab, and to everyone’s surprise, including hers, it took.

A month after it ended, she got another surprise. She woke up vomiting, her eyes a pale yellow. A blood test showed she had hepatitis C, a final going-away present from Eddie. The combination of booze and virus had ruined her liver. The doctors told her that if she didn’t get a transplant in a year, she’d be dead. Not that she needed the warning. Her skin was yellow, curdled like milk left out too long.

She didn’t expect a transplant. She didn’t deserve one. She had done this to herself. But the transplant networks had their own rules, and after eight months her name came up. She never asked about the donor. She couldn’t face another ounce of grief.

The transplant took. The immunosuppressant drugs worked. She went to her AA meetings and stayed sober. The months turned into a year, and another. She divorced Eddie in absentia. She started teaching kindergarten again, something she hadn’t done since her son died. She knew her life would never be smooth. He ex-husband was a traitor. She was no one’s idea of a catch, a forty-year-old woman on her second liver. But she imagined she might make a life for herself. It would be simple and lonely, but it would be hers.

Then the postcards came.

ALMOST FROM THE BEGINNING, the FBI agents had told her that she wasn’t a suspect. For that, she was grateful. As the investigation wound down, they asked only that she inform them if Eddie ever reached out. A call, a letter, an e-mail. Even if you’re not sure it’s him. You start getting hang-ups late at night, let us know.

Now she needed to tell them. But she couldn’t face having Eddie back in her life. She couldn’t face a trial, replaying the humiliations of the last decade. The newspapers would portray her as the pitiful ex-wife of a traitor. And they’d be right.

She needed Eddie gone. Forever.

John Wells.

It wasn’t so much that she remembered Wells. She’d never forgotten him. He and another CIA agent, Jennifer Exley, had discovered what Eddie had done. They’d come to the house the night after Eddie disappeared. She hadn’t seen Wells since then. But he’d taken charge, and part of her, despite her despair, because of her despair, had hoped that he would sweep her up and rock her to sleep. Her knight in bulletproof armor. Maybe he could solve this for her.

Ridiculous. God. Ridiculous didn’t even begin to describe her. But Wells had given her his phone number. And she’d never thrown it away. She’d kept it in her wallet all along. Now she reached for it.

WELLS CAME TO SEE her two days later. He was older than she remembered, flecks of gray in his hair, narrow creases around his eyes like a child’s drawing of rays coming off the sun. But he still had his hair. His chin was still square, and his shoulders, too. She’d bet he could still pick her up with one hand. Anyway, this wasn’t a date . She hadn’t told him about the postcard, but he must have known that her call had to do with Eddie.

He stepped inside, looked around as if he were trying to match the furniture in his head with what he saw in the living room. Most everything was new. She’d thrown out the heavy, smoke-sodden couches and replaced them with bright futons from Ikea.