In the Company of Spies

by Stephen Barlay

  “Including brother Bobby?”

  “What do you mean?” Schramm’s voice grew menacingly soft.

  “He’s been here. Looking over the Mongoose arrangements. Or so I hear.”

  “What else do you hear?”

  “That the intelligence phase is over. Mongoose is to move into the raiding phase.”

  “Bullshit. You shouldn’t listen to gossip.”

  “It bugs me.”

  “What?”

  “The whole business. Fidel’s a pain in the ass, and believe me, I have no love for him. But we can live with him. And if not, then let’s just remove him like a goddam splinter, openly and without apologies. For Chrissake, why should we be ashamed of protecting our interests? Why do we need to act secretly? Ours is a great country, and let’s just bang the table if we feel like it. According to our principles.”

  “Patriotism, Rust? Principles? You must be drunk after all.”

  “Maybe. But it hurts. I mean the way they’re changing.”

  “Okay, so you dislike the Kennedys.”

  “You’re crazy. I said nothing like that.” He held out his glass: “Fill it up.” They listened to the bottle giving out its soul. “Look, Jake, we worship what we were taught to worship and believe what we like to believe in. The fantastic thing about the Kennedys is that they’ve given us an image we could worship and enjoy believing in. But Mongoose doesn’t fit the image. Like the Bay of Pigs didn’t fit.”

  “That wasn’t his idea.”

  ‘True.”

  “And he stopped it.”

  “No, Jake, he didn’t, and you know it. He didn’t prevent it. He let them go in. And then he stopped the support. He pulled the carpet and let them die or get captured for nothing. That’s cheating. On us. And now again, they let the little creeps do the dirty for them. The Julia-Rosas and the rest of them.”

  “Still no idea what she wanted to sell me?”

  “No.”

  “Pity. You used to be on our side.”

  “I’d rather sit on the fence than on fucking committees.”

  “But you love to come and lecture me.”

  “You started it. You talked about defectors and traitors.”

  “Okay. We’ll call it quits. Now let’s find another bottle.” Schramm began to rummage in cupboards full of leaflets advertising dumpers and excavators he had no intention of selling.

  Rust tried to keep his voice light and casual. “By the way, defectors and all — did they ever find out the dead Russki’s name?”

  “What Russki?”

  “The one who was picked up with drifting refugees.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where do you hear such rubbish?”

  “Let me see … the guy was on his third daiquiri, in the Tropicana, or maybe it was the Paraíso.”

  “Some Cuban, of course.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “Come on, friend, grow up. Cubans ought to run advertising agencies, not revolutions. If any refugees are picked up around here or if any dead Russki drifts in, I’ll be the first to hear about it, believe me.”

  “That’s just what I thought.” And it was a thought that worried Rust. For Junior and his tale seemed fishy. Yet the message was genuine enough to justify a little extra risk.

  *

  It took, of course, ages to get London, and then the long wait for someone to answer the phone, and then the endless questions. Who is calling, representing whom or what, what do you mean “self,” sir, why the call, could anybody else help, if not why not, isn’t it, after all, a matter of urgency? Rust had almost forgotten: according to Charles, the ungodly hour of 10:00 A M. would still be reserved for utter emergencies to be handled exclusively by work freaks, masochists and certified insomniacs.

  “No, sir, I’m afraid Sir Charles is not available.”

  “Will he be in later?”

  “Couldn’t say for certain, sir.”

  “Shall I try in the afternoon?”

  “As it is long distance, you may find it a trifle extravagant, Misterrrr … Rust. Sir Charles has taken a few weeks’ leave of absence. But if you’d care to give me the number where you could be contacted in the next couple of days … “

  Fourteen minutes later Rust’s phone rang.

  “What’s ailing you, dear boy?”

  “Charles!”

  “Full marks for an intelligent guess, full marks.” The uninitiated would have found Charles’s camp, nasal tone ridiculous. But then Sir Charles Stoker would hardly ever bother to admit, as he had done to Rust, that “those of us who’ve been blessed only with our birthwrong and marked lack of proper upbringing must cling to the authority of the caricature which people expect to be shunned by the upstart.”

  “Thanks for calling. It’s urgent. Even if it interrupts your holiday.”

  “What can I say? You Yanks have no respect for people with time on their hands. We actually had to lose an empire to prove that we can also move fast.”

  “I must talk to you.”

  “You mean flesh to flesh, dear boy? What an exquisite idea!”

  “Can I come and see you?”

  “Easier done than said. Right now I’m virtually the boy next door. The venue is Mo’ Bay.”

  Montego Bay? The heat of Jamaica? Charles would never go near it unless duty had dragged him there bound and gagged. “I thought you disliked the heat.”

  “It’s the heart shape of the pool that tickles my fancy. That and the calypso or whatever the noise is called.”

  Saturday, September 1

  More atmospheric nuclear tests in USSR. Women’s demo with empty pots and pans in Cardenas: “We’re hungry, Fidel!” Yves St. Laurent opts for the harem look with feather-trimmed hats.

  *

  IN THE MOBILE LANDSCAPE OF BIKINIS, RUST FOUND PLENTY of distraction, but even so it would have been impossible not to notice Charles, who sat at the edge of the pool, wearing impeccable shorts and shirt and Panama hat, feet dangling in the water, mind submerged in a game of Scrabble against himself.

  “How goes it, Charles?” Rust stopped behind him.

  “I’m getting better. When I play in French, I now beat myself almost invariably.” He did not turn his head and showed no surprise. They said he had eyes in his back.

  “Lucky you have the time.”

  “Well, you know how it is, dear boy. I’m a bit like fungi athlete’s foot, let’s say — cropping up everywhere but not much in demand.” He then fell silent, concentrating on his circling toes in the water.

  Rust sat down and took a deep breath. “The message came through.”

  “You mean … ?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.” The heavy, watery eyes revealed a remarkable lack of interest, but that single syllable gave away the game. Then the voice was brought under control and the tone of concern disappeared. “And you mean to go in?”

  “I promised.”

  “Of course.”

  “You think it’s crazy?”

  “You and you alone must be the judge of that, dear boy.”

  “He’s my father.”

  “Who left you at the age of two. Or was it one?”

  “It was a job that had to be done, and he volunteered.”

  “Ah, the allure of Eden, a do-gooder’s land of promises.”

  “He’s a broken man.”

  “Who now wants to get out.”

  “I have to do it.”

  “Well, dear boy, there could be difficulties. It’s not cobblestones that pave the exit routes from Mother Russia.”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “Good, good, chivalry’s not dead yet, only somewhat senile.”

  “I may need help to go in. In a hurry. There’s no one else I can turn to.”

  “Incidentally, how’s your brother? Half brother, to be precise, I know, I know. A charming man. How is he?”

  “
Well, I presume,” said Rust.

  “Presume?”

  “Haven’t seen him for five years. He lives somewhere in Washington, I think.”

  “A fine, close-knit family. Could even be English.”

  “If you say so.”

  “But he’s still doing well, I hear. A high-flyer, you might say. Still able to produce magnificent pieces of intelligence just sitting in his wheelchair. A remarkable man. With a peach of a wife. What was the name? Anna?”

  “Look, Charles, we’ve been through this before.”

  At length, the older man’s eyes seemed to say.

  It was in Moscow. Charles Stoker, not yet knighted, acted as second secretary (commerce) at the British embassy. He was known as the dithery old man who had never quite made it. Only Rust doubted that. The older man sensed his doubt and seemed to appreciate it. They became friends in a solemn, nondemonstrative fashion. Rust was working as a journalist. With a quiet CIA string attached. Charles helped and guided him. He was certain that Rust would go a long way in the Company, perhaps some éminence grise as a top desk man, perhaps a successful field man posing as yet another aging diplomat “who never quite made it.”

  Then one long night, in the telex room of the British embassy on the Maurice Thorez naberezhnaya, waiting for news about the bloodbath in Hungary, Rust told Charles about the father he never knew.

  Herr Rost worked for the Red Cross in Berlin and Geneva. In an official capacity he went to Kazakhstan and disappeared after a couple of months. A year later, in 1930, his wife received news that her husband had died. After a not too respectable period of mourning, she married Hugh Repson, her American lover, and moved with her child to New York. Young Helmut became Helm. He disliked it. Then Elliott, a second son, was born. As a teenager, Helm refused to be a Repson. He translated and used his father’s name.

  “I’m searching for his grave,” Rust told Charles during that night.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. I just want to see it. Once. I’ve always had the urge. Maybe that’s why I majored in Russian. Maybe because once, after the war when some German prisoners of war managed to get back home, somebody said that my father had been seen somewhere in Siberia. It was all very vague and no more than hearsay, and it was contradicted by someone else who said that my father’s grave had been seen in a Siberian village. So I’m trying to find the grave, put some flowers on it and close that chapter of my life forever.”

  Charles was against it. It was a hopeless task. He was opposed to the whole idea, which would only call attention to Rust himself. “You don’t wear fluorescent clothes in the dark, dear boy, not unless you mean to be seen.” He also warned that the search might torpedo Rust’s career. “Had it done just that?” was the mute question as they sat at the poolside, Charles watching Rust, Rust ogling the girls. Did Rust really quit both journalism and intelligence because he was bored with it all and wanted to enjoy life more freely? Or did the successful search have anything to do with it? For instead of a neglected grave, Rust had found an old man, broken in spirit, but alive.

  “As you know,” Rust said at last, “we met only a few times, always with some secrecy, usually after the early-morning service at a seventeenth-century church. The clockwork regularity of his life seemed to keep him going, but he was a wreck. Shaking nonstop. Coughing. Four years in prisons, seven years in camps. It was near Volochanka, in the Arctic, where he met a Georgian woman. They made a survival pact. And succeeded. Her husband had been killed after one of the show trials. My father adopted her family. When we met, there was no room for strangers in his life. He asked very few questions. He wasn’t interested in me, my life, my mother’s fate. All he kept asking about was Geneva. He longed to see it just once more. Not Berlin, not Messkirch where he was born, just Geneva. And the Jeddo, the way the natives pronounce Jet d’Eau, that spurting fountain, he never stopped marveling. ‘Up, up, a hundred and thirty meters up, my son — I’ll never see that again.’

  “I asked if he would ever want to leave Russia. He said no, he had long forgotten how to survive anywhere else. Besides, he had a long tail. Meaning family. They’d be killed or sent to the camps; their lives and prospects would be mined. I longed to give him something. Something special to hang his hopes on. So I asked that if his wife died and his children had grown completely independent, and if I found some way to help him, would he want to come and live with me, would he risk it? I suggested we could go to Geneva together. I told him what the town looked like these days. That excited him. He said yes, that would be wonderful.

  “It was pure daydreaming, of course, because in normal circumstances, he would be both unable and unwilling to break up his life again and start all over. But, and that was a very big but, there was always the possibility of something going wrong. A mistake by him, a hostile neighbor, an informer looking for a victim and an opportunity to score, a change of policy that leads to rounding up former prisoners — any stupid change in the political climate and he could find himself on the run. So we carried on daydreaming. In fact, I had some ways at the time to help him. Why shouldn’t I offer it to him? Why shouldn’t he accept it? If nothing else, it gave him something to pin his hopes on. So we arranged this crazy code. A man, Vassily or whatever name, was very ill but much better now. My father would use it only as a last resort, if he was already on the run, if there was nothing else he could do.”

  “How would he send the message?”

  “That would be up to him. Friends could help him. The authorities would never let him make a phone call to America, but he felt sure he’d find a way. And we didn’t go too much into it, because we both knew it was just a dream. I’d go there, meet him probably in the church where he always worshiped, and get him out. Except that he’d never send me that message. Except that now he has. So what do I do? Ignore it? Leave him there to rot?”

  Charles looked away. “You never told me how you found him.”

  “It was a long, long trail, hopeless inquiries, through friends’ friends, and then snap. There it was.”

  “A miracle, dear boy, a miracle.”

  “That first meeting, he was shivering all the time. He could never warm up after the Arctic nights. ‘Keep warm,’ he said after every other sentence. ‘Keep warm.’”

  Rust dived into the pool and swam two lengths furiously. When he returned, Charles looked triumphant. He had just put out seven letters in faillir. The opposition was crumbling. “Great,” said Rust.

  “I’ll see you perhaps in London. I’ll be back by Tuesday.”

  “I need a few more days. But, thanks.”

  “For what? I promised nothing.”

  Tuesday, September 4

  Russians send armor through Checkpoint Charlie to defy Western powers in Berlin. Moscow embarrassed by thriving blackmarket in cotton socks and nylon shirts. U.S. admits accidental violation of Soviet airspace: U-2 was blown off course.

  *

  THE WINDOWS OFFERED A MAGNIFICENT VIEW OF THE WHITE House and its tree-lined south lawn, but the five men in the room paid no attention to it. They belonged to the “second layer” on the edge of the President’s immediate power circuit. The Security Committee’s deliberations had just begun to seep through to them. The presidential aide, seated behind the sumptuous desk, finished briefing them on the latest National Estimates by the U.S. Intelligence Board. The key issue concerned Cuba, and, according to the final analysis, it had been found most unlikely that the Russians would install offensive weapons, particularly long-range nuclear missiles, on the island.

  That was no great surprise to these men, for they all had contributed something to the Estimates.

  An Army officer brought in a file marked “eyes only.” It remained unopened until he saluted and turned smartly. The door creaked as it closed after him, and everybody looked up; the sound was totally out of place.

  The file contained an expert assessment by photo interpreters confirming that the SAMs sighted in
Cuba “were similar to our early Nike missiles” and that their “slant range of twenty-five miles did not represent any threat to mainland USA.” There were some sample photographs attached, and these were handed out. Elliott Repson, the young civilian in a wheelchair, passed them on without looking at them. He turned instead to the Air Force colonel:

  “Doesn’t it worry you out there, John?”

  The pilot shrugged his shoulders. He commanded a small hand-picked group who flew reconnaissance missions in “utility planes,” U-2s for short. Each man had been put through a process known as “sheep-digging”: they resigned formally from the Air Force and went onto the CIA payroll as civilians. It was hoped it would be a face-saving formula in case they were shot down and captured. Cuban overflights had been limited to two a month until the end of August, when the program was intensified to the level of two sorties a day. The magnificent airborne cameras produced miles and miles of film in paired stereo shots in depth, and the long lenses gave such incredible details that even a face could be identified from ten miles above. The photo interpreters used an “image compensation” technique to make up for the flying speed of fifteen hundred miles an hour. Nobody in this sunny room had ever heard the name of Colonel Penkovsky, but it was no secret to them that the interpreters’ work was based largely on data provided by a spy imbedded somewhere deep in the Russian defence establishment. The flights could choose any path directly over the Cuban target area until the presence of the surface-to-air missiles had been positively proved. For these SAMs were all Guidelines, the type that had brought down Gary Powers in 1960.

  “Worry me? No, I can’t say they do,” said the pilot slowly at last. “Not too much, that is. It’s more of a bother. You know we use those radar-jamming techniques, and the Russians were probably just lucky when shooting at Gary. Unless, of course, they had some secret info that would enable them to decipher our signals. Now that would change things a lot — then I’d be sitting on the gunsight of every damn SAM operator who wanted to take a potshot at me.”

  But did the Russians possess such information? And why were the SAMs cropping up suddenly in Cuba? They were no good in small numbers to stop a massive air raid, for instance, but they could certainly interfere with the U-2s. So was there anything the Cubans would definitely not want to be seen?