The Company

by Robert Littell

  “The Soviet Union,” one of the independent economists was arguing, “is an Upper Volta with rockets.” He waved a pamphlet in the air. “A French analyst has documented this. The number of women who die in childbirth in the Soviet Union has been decreasing since the Bolshevik Revolution. Suddenly, in the early seventies, the statistic bottomed out and then started to get worse each year until the Russians finally grasped how revealing this statistic was and stopped reporting it.”

  “What in God’s name does a statistic about the number of women who die in childbirth have to do with analyzing Soviet military spending?” a Company analyst snarled across the table.

  “If you people knew how to interpret statistics, you’d know that everything is related—“

  Elliott Ebbitt, Casey’s DDCI, appeared at the door of the conference room and beckoned the Director with a forefinger. Casey, only too happy to flee the debate, slipped out into the corridor with Ebby. “Will Rogers once said that an economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s,” Casey grumbled, “but I’m beginning to have my doubts.”

  “I thought you’d want to be in on this,” Ebby told him as they started toward the DCI’s suite of offices. “There’s been a breakthrough in the SASHA affair.”

  Moody from counterintelligence, along with two FBI agents, were waiting in the small conference room across from the DCI’s bailiwick. Waving a paw at the others to go on with the conversation, Casey flopped into a seat.

  Moody picked up the thread. “Director, thanks to the ingenious work of Leo Kritzky’s daughters, we’ve identified what we call the circuit breaker between the Soviet rezidentura and the cutout that runs SASHA.”

  “What makes you think the cutout runs SASHA?” Casey wanted to know.

  Moody explained about the Kukushkin serial involving the woman who freelanced for the rezidentura and the cutout who worked SASHA. “Kukushkin was a dispatched agent,” he said, “but he gave us true information in order to convince us he was a genuine defector. It looks as if the tidbit about the woman freelancer and the cutout could have been true information.”

  The FBI agent wearing a nametag that identified him as A. Bolster said, “We’re not a hundred percent sure why, but the circuit breaker, an old Polish woman by the name of Aida Tannenbaum, met the cutout late last night at the Barbizon Terrace.”

  Casey nodded carefully. “How can you be sure the person Tannenbaum met was not simply a friend?”

  Bolster said, “We have a tap on her phone. The person who called her earlier in the evening told her: ‘It violates basic tradecraft but I’ll do it—I will meet you for a drink, if you like.’”

  “He said that?” Casey inquired. “He used the word tradecraft?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Moody said, “It was short notice but we managed to get a team into the lounge when they were halfway through their little tête-à-tête. One of our people had a directional mike hidden in an attaché case, which he put on the floor pointing at them. The sound quality wasn’t very good but our technicians enhanced it and we came up with a transcript of their conversation.” Moody passed two typed sheets across to the Director, then read aloud from his own copy. “We can hear him saying, and I’m quoting: ‘You are what Americans would call an unsung heroine. The very few people who know what you do appreciate you.’ And she answers, and again I’m quoting: ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’ Then she can be heard saying: ‘I have rented a furnished apartment on number forty-seven Corcoran Street off New Hampshire, not far from Johns Hopkins University. I am moving there tomorrow. I prefer to live in buildings with college students—they are always very kind to Silvester. And they often run errands for me when I am too nauseous or too dizzy to go out in the street. Perhaps we could meet again from time to time.’”

  “Who’s Silvester?” Casey asked.

  The second FBI agent, F. Barton, said, “We think it’s the woman’s cat, Director.”

  Jack McAuliffe turned up at the door, a preoccupied frown etched onto his forehead; he’d been over at the Pentagon laying in the plumbing for the Israeli commando raid on Ibrahim’s mountain compound, and was worried sick they weren’t assigning enough helicopters. “Director, Ebby, gentlemen,” he said, sliding into a free seat next to Moody, “what’s this I hear about a breakthrough in the SASHA business?”

  While Moody brought the Deputy Director for Operations up to date in a hurried whisper, Ebby said, “Director, taken together, the phone conversation and the conversation in the Barbizon seem to suggest that, in violation of standard tradecraft precautions, the Polish woman talked the cutout into a face-to-face meeting. If, as we suspect, she’s been acting as his circuit breaker for decades, she may have fantasized about him; may have even fallen in love with him. As for the cutout—“

  “Maybe he felt sorry for her,” Moody suggested.

  “What do you think, Jack?” Ebby asked.

  Jack looked up. “About what?”

  “About why the cutout violated standard tradecraft precautions.”

  Jack considered this. “He’s been leading a dreary life,” he guessed. His eyes were heavy lidded, his face pale and drawn; it wasn’t lost on Ebby and the Director that the DD/O could have been describing himself. “Maybe he just needed to talk to someone to get through one more night,” Jack added.

  “Either way,” Ebby said, “he agreed to meet her this one time.”

  Bolster said, “On Moody’s recommendation we laid on a tiered surveillance. Twelve vehicles—six private automobiles, three taxis, two delivery vehicles, one tow truck—were involved, one peeling off as another came on line. The cutout flagged down a taxi and took it to Farragut Square, then caught a bus to Lee Highway, where he got off and changed to another bus going up Broad Street to Tysons Corner. He got off there and walked the last half-mile to an apartment over the garage of a private home—“

  Barton said, “When he emerged from the Barbizon he tore up a match-book and threw the different halves in different places. Our people recovered them—the phone number of the apartment the Polish woman moved into today was written inside.”

  Casey, always impatient, snapped, “Who is the cutout?”

  Moody said, “He’s renting the apartment under the name of Gene Lutwidge, which is obviously an operational identity.”

  Bolster said, “We’ve put a tap on Lutwidge’s line from the telephone exchange. And we’ve created a special fifty-man task force—he’ll be tailed by rotating teams every time he leaves the apartment. With any luck, it’ll only be a matter of time before he leads us to your famous SASHA.”

  Casey asked, “What does this guy do for a living?”

  Barton said, “He doesn’t go to an office, if that’s what you mean. People in the neighborhood are under the impression that he’s some kind of writer—“

  “Has Lutwidge published anything?” Casey demanded.

  “We checked the Library of Congress,” Barton said. “The only thing that surfaces when you look up the name Lutwidge is Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass—“

  “They’re by Lewis Carroll,” Casey said.

  “Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson,” Bolster explained.

  “Did you say Dodgson?” Moody exclaimed.

  Everyone turned to stare at Moody. Bolster said, “What do you remember that we don’t?”

  Moody said, “In 1961—that was before your time, Archie—the FBI arrested a man named Kahn who ran a liquor store in the Washington area. You also arrested the girl who worked for him, name of Bernice something-or-other. Both Kahn and Bernice were American communists who had gone underground, and were providing infrastructure for the Soviet agent who was the cutout between Philby and his controlling officer. We think this same cutout serviced SASHA after Philby was no longer operational. The FBI agents who raided the liquor store came across evidence of the cutout’s presence: ciphers and microfilms, a microdot reader, lots of cash and a radio that could be calibrated to s
hortwave bands, all of it hidden under the floorboards of a closet in the apartment above the store, which is where the cutout lived. The cutout smelled a rat and assumed another identity before he could be apprehended. The name he was operating under was Eugene Dodgson.”

  Casey was starting to see the connection. “Dodgson. Lutwidge. The Alice or Looking Glass quotes on the Moscow quiz program. Someone in the KGB is obsessed with Alice in Wonderland.”

  Bolster asked Moody, “Do you remember what the man posing as Dodgson looked like?”

  “The FBI report described him as a Caucasian male, aged thirty-one in 1961—which would make him fifty-three today. He was of medium height, with a sturdy build with sandy hair. There will be photographs of him in your files taken during the weeks he was under surveillance.”

  Bolster extracted an eight-by-ten photograph from an envelope and handed it across the table to Moody. “This was snapped by a telephoto lens from the back of a delivery vehicle as Lutwidge passed under a street light. The quality is piss-poor but it’ll gives you a rough idea of what he looks like.”

  Moody studied the photograph. “Medium height, what looks like light hair. If this is the man we knew as Dodgson, his hair has grown thin and his body has thickened around the middle.”

  Moody passed the photo on to Ebby, who said, “It’s been twenty-two years since the FBI described him as sturdy. All of us have thickened around the middle.”

  “The trick,” Casey quipped, “is not to thicken around the brain.”

  Ebby handed the photograph on to Jack, who fitted a pair of reading glasses over his ears and peered at the photograph. His mouth fell open and he muttered, “It’s not possible—“

  Ebby said, “What’s not possible?”

  “Do you recognize him?” Moody asked.

  “Yes…Maybe…It couldn’t be…I’m not sure…It looks like him but he’s changed…”

  “We’ve all changed,” Ebby commented.

  “It looks like whom?” Casey demanded.

  “You’re not going to believe this—it looks like the Russian exchange student I roomed with my senior year at Yale. His name was Yevgeny Tsipin. His father worked for the United Nations Secretariat…”

  Moody turned to Casey. “The Tsipin who worked for the UN Secretariat in the 1940s was a full-time KGB agent.” He fixed his eyes on Jack. “How well did your Russian roommate speak English?”

  Jack, still puzzled, looked up from the photograph. “Yevgeny graduated from Erasmus High in Brooklyn—he spoke like a native of Brooklyn.”

  Moody flew out of his chair and began circling the table. “That would explain it—” he said excitedly.

  “Explain what?” Casey asked.

  “The Eugene Dodgson who worked at Kahn’s Wine and Beverage spoke English like an American—there was no trace of a Russian accent. But Jim Angleton never ruled out the possibility that he was a Russian who had somehow perfected his English.”

  Shaking his head in amazement, Jack gaped at the photograph. “It could be him. On the other hand it could be someone who looks like him.” He stared at the photograph. “I know who’ll know,” he said.

  5

  CHERYOMUSKI, MOSCOW DISTRICT, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1983

  STARIK’S NIECES HAD TAKEN TO TIPTOEING AROUND THE SECOND-FLOOR apartment in the Apatov Mansion as if it were a clinic and Uncle was ailing, which was how he looked. His disheveled appearance—the scraggly white beard tumbling in matted knots to his cadaverous chest, the bloodshot eyes sunken into the waxen face and conveying permanent trepidation, the odor of an old man’s secretions emanating from his unwashed carcass—frightened the girlies so much that the bedtime cuddle in the great bed in which the Chechen girl blew out her brains had become a nightly ordeal. Unbeknownst to Uncle, the girlies had taken to drawing lots to see who would be obliged to crawl under the hem of his sweaty peasant’s shirt.

  “If you please, Uncle, do read more quickly,” implored the blonde Ossete when he lost his place and started the paragraph over again. Starik absently stroked the silken hair of the newly arrived niece from Inner Mongolia; even now, approaching the age of seventy, he was still moved by the innocence of beauty, by the beauty of innocence. Behind his back the Ossete reached beneath the undershirt of the Latvian and pinched one of her tiny nipples. The girl squealed in surprise. Uncle turned on the Latvian in vexation. “But she pinched my nipple,” whined the girl, and she pointed out the culprit.

  “Is that the way to treat a cousin?” Starik demanded.

  “It was meant to be a joke—“

  Uncle’s hand shot out and he cuffed her hard across the face. His long fingernails, cut square in the style of peasants, scratched her cheek. Blood welled in the wounds. Sobbing in fright, the Ossete peeled off her sleeveless cotton undershirt and held it against the welts. For a moment nobody dared to utter a word. Then the muffled voice of the Vietnamese girl could be heard from beneath Uncle’s shirt, “What in the world is happening up there?”

  Adjusting his spectacles, Uncle returned to the book and started the paragraph for the third time. “‘Look, look!’ Alice cried, pointing eagerly. ‘There’s the White Queen running across the country! She came flying out of the wood over yonder—How fast those Queens can run!’ ‘There’s some enemy after her, no doubt,’ the King said, without even looking round. ‘That wood’s full of them.’”

  Starik’s voice trailed off and he cleared a frog from his throat. His eyes turned misty and he was unable to continue. “Enough for tonight,” he barked, tugging the Vietnamese girl out from under the nightshirt by the scruff of her neck. He slid off the bed and padded barefoot to the door, leaving the room without so much as a “sleep tight, girlies.” The nieces watched him go, then looked at one another in bafflement. The Ossete’s sobbing had turned into hiccups. The other girls set about trying to scare the hiccups away with sharp cries and hideous expressions on their faces.

  In the inner sanctum off the library, Starik poured himself a stiff Bulgarian cognac and sank onto the rug with his back against the safe to drink it. Of all the passages he read to the girls this one unnerved him the most. For Starik—who saw himself as the Knight with the mild blue eyes and the kindly smile, the setting sun shining on his armor—could discern the black shadows of the forest out of which the White Queen had run, and they terrified him. “‘There’s some enemy after her,’ the King said. ‘The wood’s full of them.’” Starik had long ago identified the enemy lurking in the woods: It was not death but failure.

  When he was younger he had believed with all his heart and all his energy in the inevitability of success; if you fought the good fight long enough you were bound to win. Now the sense of quest and crusade were gone, replaced by the presentiment that there was not even a remote possibility of triumph; the economy of Greater Russia, not to mention the social structure and the Party itself, was coming apart at the seams. Vultures like that Gorbachev fellow were circling overhead, waiting to feast off the pieces. Soviet control over Eastern Europe was unraveling. In Poland, the independent trade union Solidarity was gaining ground, making a joke out of the Polish Communist Party’s claim to represent the Polish proletariat. In East Germany, the “concrete heads”—the nickname for the old Party hacks who resisted reform—were clinging to power by their fingertips.

  Clearly the genius, the generosity of the human spirit would shrivel, replaced by the rapaciousness of the unrestrained Homo economicus. If there was consolation to be had, it was in the certainty that he would wreck the capitalist edifice even as socialism went down to defeat. The Germans had an expression for it: the twilight of the gods, Götterdämmerung! It was the last gasp of gratification for those who had battled and failed to win.

  Andropov had been dozing, an oxygen mask drawn over the lower half of his face, when Starik turned up at the third-floor Kremlin suite earlier in the day. The Venetian blinds had been closed; only low-wattage bulbs burned in the several shaded lamps around the room. The General Secretary had just
completed another grueling session of hemodialysis on the American artificial kidney machine. Male nurses bustled around him monitoring his pulse, changing the bedpan, checking the drip in his forearm, applying rouge to his pasty cheeks so that the afternoon’s visitors would not suppose they were in the presence of a corpse.

  “Izvinite, Yuri Andropov,” Starik had whispered. “Are you awake?”

  Andropov had opened an eye and had managed an imperceptible nod. “I am always awake, even when I sleep,” he had mumbled from behind his oxygen mask. His left hand had levitated off the blanket and two fingers had pointed toward the door. The nurses had noticed the gesture and departed, closing the door behind them.

  Andropov understood what Starik was doing there. This was to be the General Secretary’s final briefing before KHOLSTOMER was initiated. All the elements were in place: the accounts in off-shore banks were set to dump 63.3 billion US dollars onto the spot market; at the first sign of the downward spiral of the dollar, KGB’s agents of influence in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia, along with a German economist who was close to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, would press their central banks into selling off dollar Treasury bond holdings to protect their positions, resulting in the collapse of the bond market.

  Prying away the oxygen mask, breathing hard, Andropov had started firing questions: Had the KGB come up with evidence confirming America’s intention of launching a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union? If so, where had the evidence originated? Was there an indication of a time frame?

  It had become obvious to Starik that the fate of KHOLSTOMER was intricately bound to Andropov’s assumption that the NATO exercise, designated ABLE ARCHER 83, was intended to cover the preemptive strike. If the General Secretary began to have doubts about American hostile intentions, he—like Brezhnev before him—would step back from the brink. The operatives around the world waiting for the final coded message to launch KHOLSTOMER would have to stand down. The CIA might get wind of what had almost happened from a disgruntled agent. Once the secret was out KHOLSTOMER would be dead. And so Starik did what he had never done in his forty-three years of running spies: he fabricated the report from one of his agents in place.