The Company

by Robert Littell

  “The traitor Kukushkin, the accused in criminal case Number 18043, is an opportunist,” he began, his voice suffused with outrage, “a morally depraved person who betrayed his country. He was recruited by agents of the imperialist espionage service while he served in the Soviet embassy in Washington. There he committed treason with the intent to overthrow the Soviet regime, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism in what would be left of the country. Returning to Moscow on home leave, he was caught in the act of meeting an agent of this imperialist espionage service. Confronted with irrefutable evidence by the representatives of the state security organs, the traitor Kukushkin had no choice but to admit to his crimes and sign a confession. It is this document, respected judges, that you now have before you.”

  Manny leaned forward and tapped Pravdin on the shoulder. “What did he say?”

  Pravdin twisted around in his chair; Manny got another whiff of his bad breath when the lawyer whispered, “The Procurator explains that the traitor Kukushkin has confessed to his crimes. If you want to save yourself, so, too, must you.”

  Across the courtroom the Procurator sat down. The bailiff rose and demanded, “How does the accused plead?”

  Kukushkin stood up. “I confirm I am guilty of espionage but my intent was not to dismember the Soviet Union or restore capitalism. My intent was to save the Soviet Union from an oppressive ruling class that is ruining the country economically and distorting the Communist ideal politically.”

  The Procurator leaped to his feat and waved a copy of Kukushkin’s confession. “How is it you admitted to these charges in writing?”

  “I was forced to.”

  There was an astonished rumble from the benches. The Procurator turned to the judges. “In light of this recantation I request a recess.”

  “Granted,” the chief judge growled.

  Manny was taken back to the holding room and offered coffee from a thermos and a sandwich filled with a meat he couldn’t identify. Two hours later he found himself back in the courtroom. The bailiff addressed the prisoner. “How does the accused plead?”

  Kukushkin, his shoulders hunched, mumbled something. The chief judge ordered him to speak louder. “I plead guilty to all the charges,” the prisoner said. “I admit everything.”

  The Procurator said, “What, then, was the meaning of the statement you made two hours ago?”

  “I could not bring myself to admit my guilt before the world,” Kukushkin said. “Mechanically, I sidestepped the truth in the hope of presenting my treachery in a better light. I beg the court to take note of the statement which I now make to the effect that I admit my guilt, completely and unreservedly, on all the charges brought against me. I assume full responsibility for my criminal and treacherous behavior.”

  The Procurator accepted this with a nod of satisfaction. “The accused Kukushkin admits that he delivered state secrets into the hands of an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency?”

  “I openly and unrestrainedly admit it.”

  “The accused Kukushkin admits that he met in Moscow at a prearranged place and at a prearranged time with this same agent of the Central Intelligence Agency?”

  “Yes, yes. I admit it.”

  The Procurator shuffled through what looked like cue cards. “The question inevitably arises: How can it be that a man like the traitor Kukushkin, which is to say someone born and brought up and educated during the years of Soviet power, could so completely lose the moral qualities of a Soviet man, lose his elementary sense of loyalty and duty and end up committing treason?”

  As if reading from a prepared script, Kukushkin answered: “It was the base qualities in me which brought me to the prisoner’s dock: envy, vanity, the love of an easy life, my affairs with many women, my moral decay, brought on in part by the abuse of alcohol. All of these blotches on my moral character led to my becoming a degenerate, and then a traitor.”

  The chief judge asked, “Is the agent of the Central Intelligence Agency you met present in this courtroom?”

  “Yes.” Kukushkin raised a finger and pointed at Manny without looking at him. “He is sitting over there.”

  “Look at him to be sure of the identification,” the chief judge ordered.

  Kukushkin reluctantly turned his head. His eyes met those of Manny, then dropped. “I confirm the identification.”

  The Procurator said, “Respected judges, the agent from the Central Intelligence Agency is not protected by diplomatic immunity and will be tried in a separate proceeding. The American agent denies the obvious—that he was sent to Moscow to establish contact with the traitor Kukushkin so that he could continue his perfidious behavior here in the capitol of the Motherland. The American agent denies also that he speaks fluent Russian, though a child can see, as he looks from one speaker to the other, that he is able to follow the conversation.”

  The chief judge addressed Manny directly. “Do you know the traitor Kukushkin?”

  Pravdin twisted around and repeated the question in English, then whispered urgently, “This is your opportunity to impress the judges by your truthfulness. The traitor Kukushkin is condemned out of his own mouth. Save yourself.”

  Manny rose to his feet. “Your honor,” he began. “I do know the accused.” The spectators in the audience stirred, the American vice-counsel looked up from her notebook. The chief judge brought his gavel down sharply. “I am a tourist, your honor,” Manny continued. “The truth is that I was separated from my group and, wanting to see some of the interesting sites that were not on the itinerary, wound up in the Novodievitchi cemetery. It was there that I met the accused for the first and only time in my life. Taking me for a foreign tourist, he asked me in English for my impressions of the Soviet Union. As for my being a member of the Central Intelligence Agency—nothing could be further from the truth.”

  A frail elderly woman sitting behind the judge had been scribbling notes in shorthand as Manny spoke, and now translated his testimony into Russian. The chief judge said, “Let the record show that the American denies that he is an intelligence agent.” He nodded at the Procurator. “You may deliver your summation.”

  The Procurator rose. “I call upon the respected judges, however reluctant they may be, to deliver a verdict of guilty and a sentence of execution. An example must be made of the traitor Kukushkin. The weed and the thistle will grow on the grave of this execrable traitor. But on us and our fortunate country the sun will continue to shine. Guided by our beloved leader and the Communist Party, we will go forward to Communism along a path that has been cleansed of the sordid remnants of the past.”

  Kukushkin’s defense lawyer stood up to address the court. “Respected judges, confronted with the confession of the accused Kukushkin, I can only echo my colleague’s remarks. I invite the court’s attention to the fact that the confession of the accused was wholehearted, if belated, and should be weighed on the scales of justice in deciding on a sentence appropriate to the crime.”

  Twenty-five minutes later the three judges filed back into the courtroom. The chief judge ordered the accused to rise. “Do you have a last statement before I pass judgment?”

  Kukushkin intoned woodenly, “My own fate is of no importance. All that matters is the Soviet Union.”

  The judge removed his red cap and replaced it with a black one. “Sergei Semyonovich Kukushkin,” he intoned, “degenerates and renegades like you evoke a sentiment of indignation and loathing in all Soviet people. One can take comfort from the fact that you are a passing phenomenon in our society. But your example shows clearly what danger lurks in the vestiges of the past, and what they might develop into if we do not act with ruthless determination to uproot them. I pronounce you guilty of all the charges brought against you and sentence you to be shot. Court adjourned.”

  The spectators on the benches applauded the verdict vigorously. “So finish all traitors to the Motherland,” a man called from a back row. Kukushkin’s expressionless gaze drifted over the room and came to rest
for a fleeting moment on Manny. The barest trace of an ironic smile disfigured his lips. One of his guards tapped him on the arm. Kukushkin turned and held out his wrists and handcuffs were snapped on. Walking in short steps because of the ankle bracelets, he shuffled from the prisoner’s box and disappeared through the door.

  Sometime in the pre-dawn stillness, Manny was startled out of an agitated sleep by the sound of a metal door clanging closed in the corridor, followed by footsteps outside his cell. The overhead light came on. A key turned in the lock and Kukushkin appeared at the door. Manny sat up on the army cot and pulled the blanket up to his chin. Still wearing ankle bracelets, Kukushkin walked slowly across the cell and sat down at the foot of the cot. “Hello to you, Manny,” he said, his voice reduced to a rasp.

  Manny knew that the conversation would be recorded, perhaps even filmed. He chose his words carefully. “I gather things didn’t go well for you. I want you to know…” His voice trailed off.

  Kukushkin’s heavy shoulders sagged. “I am to be executed at dawn,” he announced.

  The news struck Manny with the force of a fist. “I wish…if only I could do something—“

  “You can.”

  “What?”

  “For me it’s over. For Elena, for my daughter—“

  Manny could see the torment in Sergei’s eyes.

  “In Soviet Russia, the immediate relations of enemies of the people are made to suffer. I have denied it, of course, but they assume that my wife, even my daughter, were aware of my…activities. They will be sent to a Gulag camp for fifteen years. With her heart condition Elena will not survive fifteen days. And my daughter will not survive the loss of her mother.”

  “I don’t see—“

  “Look, Manny, I’ll come to the point. They have sent me to offer you a deal. It is important to them, vis-à-vis international opinion, that you admit publicly to being a CIA officer.”

  “But I’m not—“

  Kukushkin raised the palm of his hand. “In return for your cooperation they have promised that Elena and my child will not be punished. So, like it or not, their fate is in your hands.” Kukushkin turned away and chewed on his lip. When he had regained his composure he said, “You owe it to me, Manny. And I ask you to pay this debt. I beg you. I will go to my death with a firmer step, with a lighter conscience, if you do this thing for me.”

  Manny had the crazed feeling that he could feel the earth picking up speed in its rotation around its axis. Thoughts ripped through the lobes of his skull. He looked at the wreck of a man hunched at the foot of the bunk bed. Then he nodded miserably. “Okay,” he whispered. “I’ll do what has to be done.”

  Kukushkin nodded back and brought the palm of his hand to his chest. “I thank you from my heart,” he said.

  Manny remained awake for the rest of the night, his eyes riveted on the slit of a window high in the wall, his ears straining for the slightest groan or grate from the massive tomb of Lubyanka. He thought of Leo Kritzky, isolated in Angleton’s private dungeon; as far as Manny was concerned Leo could rot in prison for the rest of his natural life. The Company owed Kukushkin that much. When dawn broke into his own cell he heard death stirring in the courtyard below. A cart on steel-rimmed wheels was rolled into position. A short while later a door opened and a squad of men could be heard marching in lockstep across the cobblestones. A command echoed off the stone walls. The men halted and slammed their boots and the butts of rifles onto the ground. Another door was thrown open and three men walked slowly from the far end of the courtyard toward the squad waiting at parade rest. Moments later two of them walked away. More orders were barked, one on the heels of the other. In his cell, Manny folded his knees up to his chin and caught his breath. Below the window rifle bolts were thrown. A voice that Manny only recognized when he reproduced it in his brain was heard to yell, “You owe it to me, Manny.” A volley of rifle shots rang out. On the roof of the prison wave after wave of pigeons beat into the ash-streaked sky. As the men marched off in lockstep, the whiplash of a single pistol shot reverberated through Manny’s cell. The steel-rimmed wheels of the cart rolled back across the courtyard. A jet of water from a high-powered hose scoured the cobblestones. And then a silence as suffocating as any Manny had heard in his life filled his grieving skull.

  The inquisitor asked if the prisoner would like to read the confession in English before he signed both the Russian and English versions. “Why not?” Manny said. He held the sheet of single-spaced typewriting up to the light.

  I, the undersigned, Immanuel Ebbitt, hereby acknowledge the following particulars to be true and factual: One: that I am a full-time employee of the American Central Intelligence Agency on active duty. Two: that I was the controlling officer of the Soviet traitor Sergei Semyonovich Kukushkin, who defected to the American side while serving as a political attaché in Washington. Three: that I was sent under the cover of a tourist to contact the traitor Kukushkin after he was recalled to Moscow in order to convince him to continue spying for the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Manny skimmed the rest of the paper—it followed exactly the Russian version. He’d agreed to acknowledge his connection to Kukushkin but drawn the line when it came to revealing operational information or the identities of Company officers and agents; the KGB, realizing that half a loaf was better than nothing, had settled for that. Manny reached for the fountain pen that the inquisitor had set on the desk and scrawled his name across the bottom of both versions. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Now we will prepare for your public trial.”

  “Can I ask for a favor?”

  “You can ask.”

  “I’d like a different lawyer.”

  “Comrade Pravdin is one of the most competent defense attorneys in Moscow—“

  “I’m not challenging his competence,” Manny said. “It’s his bad breath that I can’t stand.”

  8

  WASHINGTON, DC, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1974

  ANGLETON LOOMED LIKE AN APPARITION BEHIND THE CIGARETTE smoke. “Pravda published a photograph of the confession alongside the story about the execution of ‘the traitor Kukushkin,’” he noted. “My people checked the signature—they’re convinced it’s Manny’s handwriting.”

  “He must have been drugged,” Ebby said. “There’s no other way to explain it.”

  Jack put his hand on Ebby’s shoulder. “There are other possibilities,” he said quietly. “He may have been…forced. I mean physically. Or he could have been trading the confession for…”

  Jack couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. Angleton finished it for him. “For his life. That’s what you wanted to say, isn’t it, Jack?”

  “Thank you for your bluntness,” Ebby said coldly.

  Angleton jammed another cigarette between his lips and, crumpling the empty pack, tossed it into the burn bag. “As you pointed out to me, Elliott, your son’s a consenting adult—he went into Russia with his eyes open.”

  “Yes, he did,” Ebby conceded. “Now the problem is to get him out—with his eyes open.”

  When the American named Immanuel Bridges failed to turn up for supper at the Metropole the evening of the visit to GUM, the Trailblazer representative leading the tour had phoned the US embassy. The embassy people weren’t unduly alarmed; from time to time a visiting fireman had gone off with one of the hookers who frequented the underpasses near the Kremlin, only to turn up a day or two later with a roaring hangover and a missing wallet. Still, the embassy had covered the appropriate bases, checking with the city militia and the hospitals. When there was still no trace of the Trailblazer tourist the next morning, an undersecretary had formally notified the Soviet Ministry of the Interior and the Department of State in Washington. The embassy’s cable to Foggy Bottom was routinely routed (“for information only”) to the CIA. At which point the alarm bells had gone off at Langley. The Kukushkin task force had gathered in Ebby’s office. For the moment all they had were hypothetical questions. Had Manny succeeded in me
eting with AE/PINNACLE at either the primary or secondary rendezvous? Had the KGB become suspicious of Manny and trailed him despite his tradecraft precautions? Or had they somehow figured out that Kukushkin was spying for the Americans? Had the father-in-law’s illness and demise been staged to get his wife and daughter, and then Kukushkin, to return to Moscow before the CIA could bring the family to safety? If Kukushkin had in fact been arrested, would he break under questioning? Would he implicate Manny?

  Two days after Manny’s disappearance, the Soviet Interior Minister had informed the embassy that an American national by the name of Bridges, Immanuel, had been caught in the act of meeting clandestinely with a Soviet diplomat and had been taken into custody. A vice-counsel, Elizabeth Crainworth (actually a CIA officer assigned to the Company’s Moscow Station under diplomatic cover) had been dispatched to Lubyanka prison to interview the American in question. Unaware (for reasons of security, Moscow Station had been left out of the loop) that she was dealing with a CIA agent on a onetime mission in Moscow, she’d reported back that Bridges had denied the Soviet charges and had maintained he was an ordinary tourist.

  The Pravda account of Kukushkin’s execution and Manny’s confession had been picked up by the Associated Press. The switchboard at the Company’s public relations office lit up as newspapers across America tried to pry a statement out of the CIA; those that managed to get through to one of Millie Owen-Brack’s public relations flacks came away with the usual “The Central Intelligence Agency does not comment on stories of this nature.” Director Colby was spirited into the White House through a side entrance to explain to an irate President Ford (who had just stirred up a storm by issuing a full pardon to Richard Nixon for all federal crimes “he committed or may have committed” while in office) why the Company had sent an officer into the Soviet Union without diplomatic cover. Inside Langley, the corridors were abuzz with rumors of what looked like an intelligence fiasco. As word of Kukushkin’s execution and Manny’s confession spread, the veteran agents and officers on the seventh floor closed ranks; many dropped by Ebby’s shop to offer moral support. Jack and Ebby huddled with some of the more experienced field hands to see if they couldn’t come up with a game plan. It was at one of these sessions that a possible solution surfaced. The brainstorming had reached a dead end when Jack suddenly jumped to his feet. “Damnation,” he exclaimed, “it’s been staring us in the face. The way to spring Manny is to exchange him for someone the KGB wants.”