The Company

by Robert Littell

  “What’s it like out at Langley?”

  “Very modern, very elaborate. After all these years on Cockroach Alley we’ll be able to spread our wings. Every division’s going to have its own suite. Soviet Russia’s on the fourth and fifth floors. Your office will be one flight down from the topsiders on the seventh floor.” Jack snickered. “They like to keep the public relations folks close by.”

  “We’re their security blanket,” Millie said.

  “Yeah. Although I don’t know why. All you ever say on the record is No comment.”

  “It’s the way we say it, Jack.”

  “Langley’s going to be easier to work in,” he went on. “The DCI suite has several waiting rooms so that visitors won’t run in to each other. You can send documents from one office to another through pneumatic tubes. They’ve set up a parallel phone system so we’ll all have numbers with a State or Defense exchange—calls to these numbers will come in on an outside line, bypassing the regular Company switchboard; they’ll be answered by operators pretending to be secretaries in other government offices.” Jack mimicked a secretary. “I’m terribly sorry but Mr. McAuliffe is away from his desk. But I’d be glad to take a message?”

  Millie listened to Jack’s breathing for awhile; it occurred to her that this was the most reassuring sound she had ever heard in her life. “That was a great homecoming barbecue this afternoon,” she said. “It was really sweet of Adelle to go to all that trouble.”

  “Leo and I go back a long way,” Jack said drowsily.

  “Leo and Ebby and you—this Bay of Pigs business really brought you closer together, didn’t it?”

  “We see eye to eye on a lot of things. Some people are starting to call us the ‘Three Musketeers’ because we hang out together so much. We work together. We break for lunch together. We party together weekends.” Jack was silent for a moment. “I like Ebby an awful lot—he’s the best the Company has, the cream of our generation. He can wade into the thick of the action, like he did in Budapest, or he can hang back and think things out for himself. He’s not afraid to speak his mind. He was the perfect choice to take over the Soviet Russia Division. Something tells me he’s going to go a long way…”

  “What did Adelle’s father mean when he told you and Leo that he’d heard it from the horse’s mouth? And what did he hear?”

  “Phil Swett gets invited to the White House pretty regularly. He said that all the Kennedy brothers could talk about at a lunch last week was Vietnam. Adelle picked up the same thing in the Vice President’s office. Lyndon Johnson has her working up a position paper on Vietnam.”

  “What’s going on in Vietnam, Jack?”

  “So far, not much. There’s a Communist insurgency but it’s back burner stuff. After what happened in Cuba, Kennedy apparently feels he needs to convince Khrushchev he can be tough. Tough and unpredictable at the same time. And Vietnam is going to be the showcase. The Company is beefing up its station there. JFK’s going to send over a few hundred Green Berets to help train the anti-Communist forces.”

  “He’d better be careful not to get sucked in. I don’t think the American people will support a war in Asia.”

  “Vietnam’s too far away.” Jack yawned into a pillow. “Nobody will notice.”

  The two newcomers and the two who had been living at the mansion for half a year were squatting in a circle on the parquet floor, playing jacks. None of the four wore a stitch of clothing. “I am up to five-zees,” announced the bony girl whose long golden tresses plunged halfway down her naked back. She tossed the small ball into the air, deftly scooped up the six-pointed pieces and snatched the ball out of the air an instant before it bounced.

  “You throw the ball so very high,” one of the new girls complained, “it’s no wonder you manage to win all the time.”

  “There is no regulation about how high one can throw it,” the golden-haired girl maintained.

  “There is,” insisted another.

  “Is not.”

  “Is.”

  “Do come over, Uncle, and decide which of us is correct,” called the girl with the golden hair.

  “Too busy right now, girlies,” Starik muttered from across the room.

  “Oh, pooh,” fumed the new girl. “If you don’t set things straight she’ll only go on winning.”

  At the worktable, Starik sipped scalding tea through a sugar cube wedged between his teeth as he reread the text of the latest lode from SASHA. One of his newcomers, a scrawny thing who walked with her toes turned out like a ballet dancer’s, came across the room and draped herself over Starik’s shoulders. “What an awfully pretty book you have there, Uncle,” she murmured into his ear.

  “It is called a world atlas,” he instructed her; he prided himself on the fact that his nieces, when they left him, were more educated than the day they arrived.

  “And what in the world is an atlas?” inquired the girl, slipping a thin hand over his shoulder and down under the front of his rough peasant shirt.

  “The atlas is the world. Look here—on every page there are maps of all the different countries.”

  “Are there enough countries in the world to fill a book, then?”

  “More than enough, dearie.”

  “And what country is on the page open before you, Uncle?”

  “Why, it is called Vietnam.”

  The girl giggled into his ear. “I have never heard anyone speak of a country with the name of Vietnam.”

  “Rest assured, you will,” Starik said.

  The Sorcerer’s tour as Chief of Station, Rome, began on a mortifying note when he dozed off during his first round-table with the American ambassador. The embassy’s political officer, a myopic John Hopkins Ph.D. with the unfortunate habit of sniffling whenever he came to the end of a sentence, was droning on about the latest nuance in the speeches of the Italian Communist Party chief, Palmiro Togliatti; according to the political attaché, Togliatti had started down the slippery slope of independence from Big Brother in the Kremlin, and this breach between the Italian and Soviet Communists ought to be encouraged and exploited. The political officer was midway through the presentation when the Sorcerer’s head nodded onto his chest and he slumped to one side in the seat. His checkered sports jacket flapped open, the pearl-handled revolver slipped out of the shoulder holster and clattered to the floor.

  “Are we keeping you up?” the ambassador inquired as the Sorcerer jerked awake.

  “I’m resting my eyes but not my brain,” Torriti shot back, leaning over to retrieve the hand gun. “I was hanging on his every word.”

  “How much more convincing you would be if you could manage to hang on his every word with your eyes open,” the ambassador remarked dryly.

  “Why Rome?” the ambassador cabled back to Foggy Bottom in Washington when, a few days later, Torriti turned up drunk at an embassy reception for the Italian foreign minister. “There are dozens of embassies around the world where he could be hidden away from Bobby Kennedy.”

  The Sorcerer, for his part, had been dragged into exile kicking and complaining. “Torriti, the patriot, is deported to Italy while the Cosa Nostra pricks, Rosselli and Giancana, get to live in America,” he had muttered into the microphone at the discreet farewell party the outgoing DD/O, Dick Bissell, organized for him in the executive dining room on the eve of his departure for Rome. There had been a ripple of laughter from the handful of people who knew what Torriti was talking about. Angleton, thinner and darker and more brooding than anyone remembered, had emerged from the polar-darkness of his counterintelligence shop to give a going-away present to the man everyone knew he detested. It was a leather holster he had personally handcrafted for Torriti’s .38 Detective Special. “Jesus, James, I don’t know what to say,” sputtered the Sorcerer, for once at a loss for words.

  “It’s not Jesus James,” Angleton, scowling, corrected him. “It’s James Jesus.”

  Torriti had peered at James Jesus Angleton to see if the counterintelligence chief
had stepped out of character to make a joke. It was obvious from the cantankerous expression on his face that this was not the case. “Sorry, sorry,” the Sorcerer had said, nodding obsequiously as he fitted his ankle gun into the holster. “James Jesus. Right.”

  In Rome, the Sorcerer made a stab at actually running the Station for several months but the situation gradually deteriorated. A colonel in the carabinieri took him on a tour of the Yugoslav frontier only to discover Torriti snoring away in the back seat of the Fiat. There were all-night binges that were hushed up, a fling with an Italian actress that found its way into the gossip columns of several Roman newspapers, a very public clash with the ambassador that wound up on the desk of the Secretary of State. There were two minor traffic accidents, one involving an embassy car, the second involving an automobile that a used car dealer swore had been stolen and Torriti claimed to have bought, though he was unable to put his hand on the receipt for the cash payment he claimed to have made. The matter was hushed up when some unvouchered Company funds changed hands. By the time July rolled around the Sorcerer had taken to flying off for sentimental weekend visits to Berlin. Accompanied by one or two old hands who had served under him when he was the head of Berlin Base, he’d make the rounds of the bars where his name was still a legend, then wander through the shadowy side streets near Checkpoint Charlie to get a whiff of the action, as he put it. On one memorable occasion he drank whiskey at a pub in the British Sector and had to be forcibly restrained from strolling into the Soviet zone for a chaser. At two in the morning one Sunday during the second week of August, he trudged with his old Mossad pal, Ezra Ben Ezra, to the roof of an apartment building to watch as Soviet tanks wheeled into position and East German troops strung barbed wire blocking the frontier between the two Germanies. Behind the tanks and troops came an armada of bulldozers, their headlights tunneling through the dust and darkness as they cleared a broad no-man’s land that would later be mined. “This rates a nine on my Richter scale,” the Rabbi told his old friend. “My sources tell me this is Khrushchev’s answer to the Bay of Pigs—they are going to build a Great Wall of China across Germany, sealing off the Communist zone from the free world.” The Sorcerer pulled a hip flask from a pocket and offered the Rabbi a swig. Ben Ezra waved away the alcohol. “There is nothing here to celebrate,” he said mournfully. “It will be next to impossible to get Jews out now.”

  Returning to Rome that night, Torriti found a bottle of cheap whiskey and two kitchen tumblers set out on his desk and Jack McAuliffe stretched out on the couch waiting for him. A table lamp in a corner etched shadows onto the café-au-lait walls as the two sat drinking and reminiscing into the early hours of Monday morning. The Sorcerer, his eyes puffy, pulled out his pearl-handled revolver, spun the cylinder and set the weapon on his knees, with the barrel pointing directly at Jack’s stomach. “I wasn’t born yesterday, sport,” he grumbled. “You weren’t sent all this way to chew the fat. What aren’t you saying to me?”

  “What I’m not saying, Harvey, is you’re an embarrassment to the Company.”

  “Who says so?”

  “The American ambassador to Rome says so. The new DD/O, Dick Helms, agrees with him. The new DCI, John McCone, also.”

  “Fuck them all.”

  “What I’m not saying, Harvey, is you’ve been around a long time. You’ve pulled your weight and then some.”

  “What you’re not saying is I ought to call it a day, right?”

  “All things considered, that would probably be the best thing to do, Harvey.”

  “I’m glad it was you they sent, Jack.” The Sorcerer, suddenly sober, straightened in the chair. “Do they want me to hang in here until the new Chief of Station comes out?”

  “I’m the new Chief of Station, Harvey.”

  Torriti nodded listlessly. “At your pleasure, sport.”

  The Sorcerer organized his own farewell bash in the ballroom of the Rome Hilton. For background music there were recordings of arias sung by Luciano Pavarotti, an Italian tenor who had made a scintillating debut earlier in the year. Liquor flowed. Speeches were delivered. The phrase “end of an era” came back like a refrain. Around midnight Jack finally managed to get a call through to Millie in Washington; she and Anthony would be flying over the following week, their furniture would be coming out on an MSTS freighter at the end of the month, she said. Had Jack found an apartment yet? Jack promised he’d start looking first thing Monday.

  Returning to the ballroom, Jack discovered that the Hilton’s night manager had turned off the air conditioning. The handful of people remaining drifted toward the exits. Two secretaries were fending off a very soused Torriti, who was trying to talk them into transporting the party, or what was left of it, to “a more reputable hotel than the Hilton.” At two in the morning Jack and his old boss from Berlin Base stumbled out onto the sidewalk in front of the hotel. A stifling August heat wave struck them in the face.

  Jack gasped. “We need air conditioning.”

  “We need booze,” Torriti agreed. Hanging on to each other’s arms, the two stumbled down the street to the Excelsior on Via Veneto and managed to bribe the bartender into giving them one for the road.

  Munching an olive, Torriti squinted at Jack. “So you loved her, didn’t you, sport?”

  “Who?”

  “The German broad. The dancer. The one that went by the code name RAINBOW. The one that filled her mouth with water and shot herself.”

  “You mean Lili. Yeah, Harvey. I did love her.”

  “I figured.” Torriti threw back some more whiskey. “She wasn’t one of my barium meals, Jack.”

  “That’s what you said at the time. I never thought otherwise.”

  “There was a war on but there are lines I don’t cross.”

  “I know that, Harvey.”

  “You believe me, don’t you, kid?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Cause if you didn’t, if you thought she’d been one of my goddamn barium meals, it would hurt real bad, you see what I mean?”

  “I never blamed you.”

  The Sorcerer punched Jack in the shoulder. “That means a lot to me, sport.” He signaled for a refill.

  “Last one, please,” implored the bartender as he refilled their glasses. “I have this second job, it starts at eight-thirty, which leaves me five and a half hours to sleep.”

  Torriti clinked glasses with Jack. “My barium meals paid off, sport. It was yours truly who smoked out Philby when fucking Jesus James you-know-who was buying him lunch at La Niçoise.”

  “The Company owes you, Harvey.”

  Torriti leaned so far toward Jack that he would have fallen off the barstool if he hadn’t grabbed the brass rail. “There’s another Russian mole in the Company,” he murmured, the liquor breath stirring the air around his companion’s face. “The famous SASHA. And I know who it is.”

  “You know the identity of SASHA!”

  “Fucking A. I’ll let you in on a little secret, kid. SASHA is none other than Jesus James fucking Angleton himself.” When Jack started to smile Torriti turned ornery. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, pal. Okay, the evidence is circumstantial, I’m the first to admit it. Look at it this way: If the KGB actually has a mole inside the Company he couldn’t do more damage than Angleton.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you—“

  “Angleton’s been turning the CIA inside out for the last ten years looking for moles, right? Tell me something, sport—has he ever found one? The answer is negative. But he’s crippled the Soviet Russia division with his suspicions. He’s got everyone looking over everyone else’s shoulder. I know guys who’re afraid to bring in a defector for fear Angleton will think they’re vouching for a KGB plant because they’re a KGB plant. I made a head count once—Jesus James’s ruined the careers of something like a hundred officers. He sits on the promotion board—“

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, I know that. He’s blackballed dozens of promotions, he�
�s forced good people into early retirement. One Soviet Russia division officer on Angleton’s shit list went and passed a lie detector, at which point he was reassigned to Paris as Chief of Station. You know what Angleton did?”

  “What did he do, Harvey?”

  “Fucking Jesus James flew to Paris and personally warned the French counterintelligence people that the CIA station chief was a Soviet mole. The fucking frogs immediately cut off all contact with the station. Holy shit, Angleton’s going around telling anyone in Congress who’ll listen that the Sino-Soviet split is KGB disinformation designed to lull the West into letting down its guard. Ditto for Tito in Yugoslavia.”

  The bartender finished rinsing glasses. “Gentlemen, have a heart. I need to close now.”

  The Sorcerer slid off the seat and hiked his baggy trousers high up on his vast waist. “Remember where you heard it first, sport,” he said. “Jesus James fucking Angleton is SASHA.”

  “I won’t forget, Harvey.”

  “Fucker thought he’d buy me off with a holster but I’m one jump ahead of him. Shit, I may go around in vicious circles but I go around one jump ahead of everyone.”

  Outside the Excelsior, Torriti looked up and down the deserted avenue, trying to figure out which way to go and what to do with the rest of his life. With Jack trailing behind, he staggered off in the direction of the American embassy, a block away. As he drew abreast of the gate, the young Marine on duty in the glass booth recognized him.

  “Morning to you, Mr. Torriti, sir.”

  “No fucking way,” the Sorcerer called over his shoulder to Jack as he waddled past the Marine down the walkway toward the main entrance. “RAINBOW wasn’t one of my barium meals.” He reached the wall and unzipped his fly and flexed his knees and began to urinate against the side of the embassy. “I’d remember if she was, sport. Something like that’d lodge in your skull like a goddamn tumor.”

  Jack caught up with the Sorcerer. “I can see how it would, Harvey.” He conjured up a vision of Roberto and Orlando and the other Cubans jammed into one of Castro’s dark dungeons. Blinking hard to stifle the image, he opened his fly and began to relieve himself against the embassy, too.