The Company

by Robert Littell

  “It’s all right. Really. Nooooo problem.”

  “I can tell from your voice it’s a problem.”

  “Hey, it’s not as if I can’t scare up a date for Young Frankenstein. Afterwards we can meander back to my place, crack a bottle of California red, turn down the lights, put on some Paul Anka. You know from personal experience how one thing has a way of leading to another. Next thing you know we could be into what Erica Jong calls the Zipless Fuck.”

  “I’m really sorry, Nellie. Something important’s come up—“

  “With you guys something important’s always coming up. That’s what my mother says. Elizabet says you have to be stark raving to fall for someone who works for the CIA because you start out a Company widow and it’s all downhill from there.”

  Manny slipped another coin into the slot. “Are you saying you’ve fallen for someone who works for the Company?”

  “I’ve fallen for the opposite of the Zipless Fuck, which, so far, I’ve unfortunately for me only experienced with you.”

  “You put a lot of emphasis on the physical side of a relationship—” “Yeah, I do, don’t I? Pay attention, Manny, because I’m going to fill you in on my theory about lasting relationships. My theory is you need to start someplace and the bedroom is as good a venue as any. So do you or don’t you want to hear the good news?”

  “You got the job!”

  “I did, I did. Oh, Manny, I’m really delirious. I waved my Harvard diploma under their noses and they cracked. The firm’s small but it’s one of the hottest items in DC. Two ex-senators and a former Cabinet Secretary. And I’m the first woman they’ve ever hired who wasn’t there to take dictation. It’ll be a scream—all those three-piece suits and me in my miniskirt!”

  “That’s fantastic, Nellie. I knew you’d wow them—“

  “You want to hear how much they’re paying me a month?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Nellie had a sudden thought. “Hey, you don’t have a hang-up about dating girls who make more than you, I hope.”

  “No. My only hang-up is about incest.”

  Nellie’s laughter pealed down the phone line. “I’ll admit I’m relieved. A hang-up over money could have been a serious hurdle. So when do you get to see me again?”

  “Maybe this weekend. Maybe.”

  “What’s with the maybe?”

  “I told you, something important’s on a front burner.”

  “Okay. I suppose there’s nothing for me to do but masturbate until then.” “Nellie, you’re impossible—“

  “You’ve got it ass-backwards, Manny. What I am is possible.”

  The AE/PINNACLE task force set up shop in an empty office down the hall from the DD/O. The housekeepers swept the room for bugs, then brought in a safe with a Burmah lock, a shredding machine, a burn bag and assorted office furniture. Jack McAuliffe was put in charge, reporting directly to Ebby, the DD/O, who in turn reported directly to the DCI, Bill Colby. Angleton himself (his interest piqued by the would-be defector’s mention of SASHA) sat in on the informal meetings, which were held every second day. With Jack looking over his shoulder, Manny set about putting in the plumbing for the defection that might or might not take place. Agatha Ept, thrilled to let a little excitement into her dreary nine-to-five existence, announced that she was game; sure, she’d be willing to go through the motions of having an illicit affair with a married Russian diplomat if it was in the interests of national security. The superintendent of Ept’s apartment building, a retired chief petty officer who had painted the basement spaces battleship gray, went out of his way to be helpful. As a matter of fact, he said, there would be a vacant apartment down the hall from 5D at the end of the month; the homosexual couple living in 5F had signed a lease on a floor-through in Annadale. Manny knocked on the door of 5F and flashed a laminated card identifying him as a State Department security officer. When he offered to foot the bill for the move if the tenants vacated immediately, the couple jumped at the opportunity. The first night after 5F was free a crew from the Office of Security moved in electronic equipment, along with two army cots and a percolator. Working out of the vacated apartment they wired every room in Ept’s apartment, and rigged the phone and the doorbell so that both rang simultaneously in 5D and 5F. Then they set up a tape recorder and a backup machine, and settled in for the duration.

  Back in Langley, Manny took a shot at getting the head of the US Patent Office to give them some recent patent applications that a junior patent officer such as Ept might have access to. He ran into a brick wall and had to pass the matter up the chain of command. Eventually the DD/O put in a call to Yale classmate who worked as a legislative aide on the Senate Armed Services Committee and explained the problem. Three quarters of an hour later, the head of the Patent Office called to tell Ebby he would be sending over three raw reports on pending patents for relatively unimportant industrial gadgets. Now that he understood what was a stake, he would be delighted to supply more of the same if and when they were needed.

  Angleton, meanwhile, produced a six-page, single-spaced typewritten list of questions (with the answers in parentheses) that he wanted Manny to throw at AE/PINNACLE; the list was designed to determine if the defector Kukushkin was, in fact, the Sergei Klimov on the Central Registry 201 and not someone pretending to be him. The questions ranged from “What was the name and nickname of the person who taught ‘Bourgeois Democracy—a Contradiction in Terms’ at Lomonosov University?” to “What was the nickname of the fat woman who served tea in the First Chief Directorate’s third-floor canteen at Moscow Centre?” Angleton instructed Manny on the seven layers of meaning that could be coaxed out of any given set of facts. Take his list of questions: a genuine defector would not be able to answer all the questions correctly. But then, a dispatched agent who had been coached by a KGB maestro would be careful not to answer all the questions correctly. Manny asked: Assuming that Kukushkin answers some of the questions incorrectly, how will we know if he is genuine or a dispatched agent?

  From behind a cloudbank of cigarette smoke, Angleton’s rasped: Welcome to the wilderness of mirrors.

  It was Angleton, nursing a persistent migraine that had reduced his eyes to brooding slits, who worked out Manny’s modus operandi for the second meeting with AE/PINNACLE. The first priority would be to establish the defector’s bona fides, hence the six-page list of questions. The peculiar situation that the defector found himself in—he and his family had to come over before SASHA returned to Washington—gave the Company, in Angleton’s considered opinion, some very strong leverage. Assuming Kukushkin-Klimov passed muster, Manny’s second priority would be to talk him into immediately delivering the several serials that would lead them to SASHA. AE/PINNACLE needed to be informed that, in the best of all possible worlds, a defection would take time to organize. The Russian would be encouraged to deliver the SASHA serials for his own safety, and that of his family; if SASHA remained operational, so Manny was instructed to argue, he would certainly learn of the defection when he returned to Washington and promptly betray Kukushkin to the SK people at the embassy. Angleton pointed out that if the Company could identify and apprehend SASHA on his return to Washington, there was a good possibility that Manny would then be able to talk AE/PINNACLE into spying in place until the end of his tour of duty at the embassy. This could be achieved through judicious use of carrots (a sizable lump-sum payment when he finally came over, a new identity for himself and his family, first-class medical help for his wife, a high-paying consultancy contract from the Company) and sticks (hinting that he would not be granted political asylum except on Company terms, and thus his wife would not have access to American medical help).

  As the meeting was ending Manny raised the possibility that AE/ PINNACLE might be wired for sound. Angleton’s lips twisted into scowl. “If AE/PINNACLE is a genuine defector, he won’t be wired,” he told Manny. “If he’s a dispatched agent, he won’t be wired so as not to give himself away.”

 
On Thursday evening a very weary Manny was drinking lukewarm coffee in 5F with two men from the Office of Security when the phone rang. One of the men flicked on the tape recorder and tripped a button on a loud speaker. Agatha Ept could be heard picking up the phone in her apartment.

  “Hello?” she said, her voice rising to transform the word into a question.

  “Hello to you.”

  Manny nodded at the second security man, who picked up a phone hooked to a permanently open line and said quietly, “He’s called—see if you can trace it.”

  “Oh, it’s you,” Agatha said with a suggestion of breathlessness; Manny hoped she wouldn’t ham it up too much. He wondered if the SK people at the embassy were recording the conversation on their end. “I guess I oughtn’t to admit it but I was hoping you’d call,” she added.

  AE/PINNACLE seemed relieved. “I am hoping you are hoping such a thing.”

  Agatha was playing her role—eager, yet fearful of appearing too eager—to the hilt. “I was wondering…I mean, if you’re free…What I’m driving at is, well, what the hell, would you like to come for supper tomorrow.”

  The Russian cleared his throat. “So: I am free tomorrow—I will come happily, of course.”

  “Do you remember where I live?”

  AE/PINNACLE laughed excitedly; he, too, was playing his role well—but what was his role? “It is not something I am forgetting easily,” he said.

  “Where are you calling from?” Agatha asked.

  “A public phone near the…near where I work.”

  “They traced the call—he’s calling from the Soviet embassy,” the security man on the open line told Manny.

  “Well, that’s settled,” Agatha said. “About six-thirty would be fine. I get back from the Patent Office at five-thirty”—she had worked the Patent Office into the conversation as Manny had asked—“which will give me time to make myself presentable.”

  “You are very presentable,” AE/PINNACLE said.

  Agatha caught her breath. “Tomorrow, then?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow. Goodbye to you, presentable lady.”

  “Goodbye, Sergei.”

  A moment later the phone rang in 5F. Manny snatched it off the hook. “He’s coming,” Agatha announced excitedly.

  “I know. I heard the conversation.”

  “How’d I do?”

  “You were great. You ought to think of getting into the acting business.”

  Agatha laughed nervously. “To tell the truth I had my heart in my mouth—I was so frightened.”

  “The thing now, Agatha, is to go about your life as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening. We’ll be monitoring your apartment all day to make sure nobody from their side breaks in to plant microphones. If you have any unusual contacts—if anybody calls you whom you don’t know—you phone the number I gave you and report it immediately.”

  “You’ll be here when he shows up?”

  “I’ll be outside your door when he gets off the elevator.

  Despite Angleton’s assurances that AE/PINNACLE would not be wired, Manny decided it wouldn’t hurt to check. As the Russian emerged from the elevator Manny signalled with a forefinger to his lips for him to remain silent, then held up an index card with the words, written in Russian: “Are you wired for sound?”

  “Not wired for sound, Manny,” Kukushkin replied in English. He raised his arms and spread his legs. “You may search me if you wish. My rezident very happy when I tell him of this contact. He always ready to boast to Moscow Centre about new sources of information.”

  Manny gestured for him to lower his arms and follow him. He produced a key, opened the door to 5D and locked it when they were both inside Ept’s apartment.

  Agatha came across the room. “Hello,” she said, shyly offering a hand, which the Russian vigorously shook.

  “Hello to you, presentable lady,” he said with a smirk.

  “Not that it matters,” she said, “but today happens to be a propitious time for intercourse between Capricorns and Virgos. Both parties will tend to be wary at first but once they break the ice great things will follow. I’d explain why but judging from the way you’re both looking at me it would take more time than you want to invest. So unless I hear dissenting opinion…no one? Then I’ll leave you gentlemen to yourselves now.” Turning on a heel she disappeared into the bedroom.

  Manny motioned Kukushkin to sit on the couch and settled down on a chair facing him. The Russian loosened his tie and grunted something that Manny recognized as a curse in Tajik. “You speak Tajik?” Manny asked in surprise.

  “I do not speak it—I curse in it,” Kukushkin said. “My grandfather on my father’s side was a Tajik. How is it you recognize Tajik?”

  “I studied Central Asian languages in college.” He pulled a thick wad of typed pages from his breast pocket. “Question and answer time, Sergei,” he announced.

  “I am knowing the rules of this terrible game we are playing. You are wanting to make certain I am who I say.”

  “Something like that.” Manny eyed the Russian. “When you phoned Agatha yesterday you told her you were calling from a public phone. Were you?”

  Kukushkin looked around. “Where are microphones?”

  Manny said, “All over the place.”

  Kukushkin nodded grimly. “I am phoning from embassy, not public phone. The rezident, Kliment Borisov, is listening on extension. SK is recording conversation. Borisov is telling me to tell I using public phone, since I am supposed to be starting love affair outside of marriage and not wanting wife, not wanting people at embassy, to know.” The Russian crossed his legs, then uncrossed them and planted his large feet flat on the floor. “Are you having patent documents I can take back.”

  Manny put on a surgeon’s glove and pulled the photocopies of the three raw patent reports from a manila envelope. He handed them to Kukushkin, who glanced quickly at the pages. “Her fingerprints are being on them?” he asked.

  “You think of everything,” Manny said, removing the glove. “I had her read through the reports and put them into the envelope.”

  The Russian folded the papers away in his inside breast pocket. “It is you who are thinking of everything, Manny.”

  “Time to put the show on the road,” Manny said. He looked at the first question typed in Cyrillic on the top sheet. “What was the name and nickname of the person who taught ‘Bourgeois Democracy—a Contradiction in Terms’ at Lomonosov University?”

  Kukushkin closed his eyes. “You are having very good biography records at your CIA. Teacher of ‘Bourgeois Democracy’ is Jew named Lifshitz. He is losing an eye escorting British convoys from Murmansk during Great Patriotic War and wearing black patch over it, so students are calling him Moshe Dayan behind his back.”

  Reading off the questions in Russian, Manny worked his way down the list. Speaking in English, Kukushkin answered those that he could. There were a handful that he couldn’t answer—the man’s name had slipped his mind, he said—and several that he answered incorrectly, but he got most of them right. Agatha brought them cups of steaming tea at one point and sat with them while they drank it. Kukushkin asked her where she worked in the Patent Office and what kind of documents passed through her hands; Manny understood that he was gathering details for the report he would be obliged to write for the SK people. When they returned to Manny’s list of questions, Kukushkin corrected one of the inaccurate answers he had given and remembered the nickname of the fat woman who had served tea in the third floor canteen in Moscow Centre: because of the mustache on her upper lip and her habit of wearing men’s shirts, everyone had taken to calling her “Dzhentlman Djim.” Manny was halfway through the last of Angleton’s six pages when the telephone on the sideboard rang. Both the Russian and Manny stared at it. Agatha appeared in the bedroom doorway; behind her the television set was tuned to Candid Camera. “It could be my mother,” she said hopefully.

  “Answer it,” Manny said.

  “What do I say if it’s not?�
��

  “You don’t say anything. You’re starting an illicit affair with a married man. That’s not the kind of thing you’d tell someone over the phone while he was here.”

  Agatha gingerly brought the telephone to her ear. “Hello?” Then: “What number are you calling?”

  She looked at Manny and mouthed the words search me. “Well, you have the right number but there’s no one here by that name…You’re welcome, I’m sure.” She hung up. “He wanted to speak to someone named Maureen Belton.” She batted her eyes nervously and retreated to the bedroom.

  Manny went over to the sideboard and picked up the phone. “Were you able to trace it?” He listened for a moment, then replaced the receiver and came back to his seat. “Too quick to trace. It was a man—he spoke with an accent.”

  “The SK is having her phone number. Maybe they checking to see if there is a woman here.”

  “That may be it,” Manny agreed.

  “So how am I doing with your questions and my answers?” Kukushkin asked when Manny reached the end of the six pages.