The Company

by Robert Littell

  “Can you identify the agents of influence?”

  “No. But I know which countries they’re supposed to be operating in. Our stations—“

  A half smile crept onto Jack’s face. “Our?”

  Leo grinned back. “I’ve been leading a double life for a long time. Your stations ought to be able to figure out which one of the people close to the central bank of any given country might be a Soviet agent of influence.”

  “If in doubt,” Jack said, “we could always neutralize the three or four leading candidates. That’s how the KGB operates, isn’t it?”

  Leo exploded, “Don’t be so pious, Jack! Your stations trained the secret police in Vietnam, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Iraq, Iran—the list is as long as my arm. You looked the other way when your clients arrested and tortured and assassinated their political opponents. The Phoenix Operation in Vietnam, with its tiger cages on Con Son Island, killed or crippled some twenty thousand Vietnamese suspected—only suspected, Jack, not convicted!—of being pro-Communist.”

  “The Company was fighting fire with fire—” Jack insisted.

  “Fire with fire!” Leo repeated scornfully. “You financed and equipped and trained armies of agents and then abandoned them—the Cubans in Miami, the Khambas in Tibet, the Sumatran colonels in Indonesia, the Meos in Laos, the Montagnards in Vietnam, the National Chinese in Burma, the Ukrainians in Russia, the Kurds in Iraq.”

  Jack said, very quietly, “You’re the last person on earth who ought to climb on a moral high horse, buddy.”

  Leo rose to his feet. “I’ve admired you all of my adult life, Jack. Even before you made it off the beach at the Bay of Pigs, you were a hero to me—it didn’t matter that we were on different sides of the fence. I still have that mug shot of you in the senior yearbook—‘Jack McAuliffe, mad, bad and dangerous to know.’ You were always mad, you were sometimes bad—but you were never dangerous to know.” Leo shrugged tiredly. “I’m sorry, Jack.” His lips tightened and he nodded once. “Sorry that our friendship had to end this way…”

  Jack had a vision of Leo filling the tin cup from Angleton’s toilet and drinking off the water, and then turning to him to whisper through his raw lips Go fuck yourself, Jack. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him, “You too, Leo—go fuck yourself, huh?” But he stopped himself and said instead: “You’re eating into your head start, buddy.”

  “Yeah, I am.” Leo retrieved a plastic airline bag from a closet, then switched on the radio and turned up the volume. “Listen up, Jack,” he called from the door. “My Russian friends aren’t going to publicize my defection if I can help it—I want to protect the girls and my ex-wife. Also, I haven’t told Moscow Centre about the Israeli raid. I hope to God it works out.”

  Jack couldn’t bring himself to thank SASHA; he would have gagged on the words if he had tried. But he lifted his free paw to acknowledge this last favor.

  The skinny black kid, decked out in a tight red jump suit with the name “Latrell” embroidered over the breast pocket, shook his head emphatically. Hell, there couldn’t be no mistake, he insisted. No way. He leafed through the packet of order forms and came up with one. Looka here, mister, he said. One Neapolitan without olives. The orderer is—he named a street in Tysons Corner, a house number. The apartment over the garage at the end of the driveway, that’s you, ain’t it?

  That’s me, Yevgeny admitted. What’s the name on the order?

  The black kid held the form up to the light seeping through the partly open door. Dodgson, he said. You Dodgson?

  Yevgeny reached for the pizza. How much do I owe you?

  Five-fifty.

  Yevgeny came up with a five and two ones and told the kid to keep the change. He shut the door and stood with his back pressed against it until the pounding in his chest subsided. A pizza delivered to Dodgson, the name Yevgeny had abandoned when his identity had been blown twenty-two years before, was SASHA’s emergency signal. It meant the world had come to an end. It meant the Americans had somehow managed to identify the cutout who serviced SASHA. FBI agents were probably watching him day and night. Gradually, a semblance of calm seeped back into Yevgeny’s thought process. Start with a single fact and follow the logic of it, he told himself. Fact: they hadn’t arrested him yet, which was a good omen—it must mean they were hoping he would lead them to SASHA. Which meant that they didn’t know who SASHA was. Which in turn suggested that the weak link was between the KGB’s Washington rezident and Yevgeny: Aida Tannenbaum.

  Fortunately for Yevgeny, SASHA had learned about the breakthrough and had now warned Yevgeny the only way he could. Okay. The next thing he had to do was go through the motions of going to bed—leave enough of the window shades halfway up so that anyone watching through binoculars would see that he didn’t have a worry in the world.

  Yevgeny cut out a wedge of pizza and forced himself to eat it while he watched the end of a movie on the small portable TV set. He changed into pajamas and brushed his teeth and, switching out the lights in the other rooms, retreated to the small bedroom. He sat up in bed for a quarter of an hour going through the motions of reading Philip Roth’s The Anatomy Lesson. The truth of the matter was that his eyes were incapable of focusing on the words; that the pulse throbbing in his forehead made thinking difficult. Yawning, he set the book down, wound his clock and checked the alarm. Almost as an afterthought, he padded over to the window and pulled down the shade. Climbing under the covers, he switched off the light on the night table.

  In the total darkness, the sounds from the neighborhood seemed amplified. Every quarter hour or so he could make out the bus coming down Broad Street, two blocks away. Sometime after midnight he caught the scrape of a garage door opening and a car backing down a driveway. At 12:25 he heard the next door neighbor calling to his dog to pee already, for Christ’s sake. His brain awash with scenarios, Yevgeny lay there motionless until the luminous hour hand on the alarm clock clicked onto three. Then, moving stealthily, he slipped into his clothing and overcoat and, carrying his shoes, made his way to the bathroom in his stockinged feet. He flushed the toilet—they might have planted a microphone in the apartment—and while the water was gushing through the pipes, eased open the small window that gave out onto the sloping roof of the toolshed attached to the back of the garage. Once on the roof, he let himself down the incline and climbed down the trellis to the ground. Here he put his shoes on and tied the laces and, crouching in the shadows, listened. The night was cold; with each breath he expelled a small cloud of vapor. From the back bedroom of a nearby house came the sound of a hacking cough. A bed lamp flicked on, then was switched off again. After a long while Yevgeny rose to his feet and crossed the yard, moving in the shadow of the high wooden fence that separated the back garden from the next door neighbor’s paved basketball court. At the end of the garden he climbed over a wooden fence and, moving sideways, squeezed through the space between two garages. Halfway to the end, under a boarded up window, he felt for the chipped brick and, working it loose, plunged his hand into the cavity to retrieve the package wrapped in layers of plastic.

  Twenty minutes later Yevgeny ducked into an all-night drugstore a mile or so up Broad Street. He ordered a coffee and a doughnut and made his way to the phone booths at the back. He had thrown away Aida’s new phone number but he remembered the address: 47 Corcoran Street. He dialed information and requested the number of a party named Tannenbaum at that address. He dialed the number and heard the phone ring. After a dozen rings the breathless voice of Aida came on the line.

  “Who is this?” she demanded.

  Yevgeny knew they would be tapping her phone. As long as he didn’t remain on the line long enough for the call to be traced, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. “It’s me, lovely lady.”

  He could hear a frightened gasp. “Something must be very wrong for you to call at this hour,” Aida whispered.

  “Yes. Something is wrong.”

  “Oh!”

  “I have
to hang up before they trace the call.”

  “Is it that bad, then?”

  “You are a great lady, a great fighter, a heroine. I hold you in high esteem.” Yevgeny hated to break the connection. He blurted out, “I wish there were something I could do for you.”

  “There is. Hang up quickly. Run fast, dear child. Save yourself. And remember me as I remember you.”

  Aida cut the line. Yevgeny listened to the dial tone ringing in his ear for several seconds, then hung up and, swaying unsteadily, stumbled back to the counter to nurse his coffee and doughnut. He glanced at his wristwatch. He still had two and a half hours to kill before he met SASHA at the prearranged site.

  Aida knew she should have been terrified but the only emotion she could detect was relief. After all these years it was finally going to end. She wedged a chair under the knob of the front door and went down the hallway into the narrow kitchen. She wedged a chair under the knob of that door, too, and stuffed the gap under the door with newspaper, then turned on the four gas burners and the oven. Lifting Silvester out of the basket lined with an old nightdress, she sat at the small linoleum-covered table and began to stroke his neck. She smiled when the old cat started to purr. She thought she heard a car pull up on the street somewhere under the window. It reminded her of the night the Gestapo had raided the warehouse where the Communist underground kept the printing press, and her dear, dear son, Alfred, was torn screaming from her arms. Was that the grind of the elevator starting up or just her imagination? She felt terribly, terribly tired. Fists were pounding on the door of the apartment. She rested her head on one arm and tried to summon an image of her son, but all she saw was her lover, Yevgeny, bending to kiss the back of her gloved hand.

  With a crash, the front door burst open against its hinges.

  Savoring the thought that she had finally run out of time, Aida reached for the box of safety matches.

  6

  YATHRIB, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1983

  THE STRING OF CAMELS—THREE OF THEM CARRYING BURLAP SADDLE sacks filled with food, drinking water and ammunition; the twenty-five others loaded with long wooden crates, two to an animal—made their way across the fast-flowing stream. The twelve Arab herdsmen, all heavily armed, all wearing kiffiyeh drawn over their noses against the dust kicked up by the camels, had strung a thick cord from the rusted Russian tank awash in the water to a tree on the far bank and had posted themselves at intervals along the cord to steady any camel that lost its footing. Once on the other side the men paused for a lunch break. The practicing Muslims in the group prostrated themselves in the direction of Mecca and began to pray. The non-practicing among the herders brewed green tea in a beat-up casserole propped over a small fire. Chunks of stale bread, baked the previous day in shallow holes scooped out of the ground, and tins of humus were passed around, along with raw onions. If anyone noticed the two Pashtuns inspecting them through binoculars from a cliff high above, he didn’t call attention to the fact. When lunch was finished most of the men sat with their backs to trees, dozing or sucking on cigarettes. Five minutes before the hour the headman, a slim Egyptian wearing khaki fatigues and mirrored sunglasses, climbed to his feet and, calling in Arabic, began rounding up the camels that had wandered off to graze. When the line was formed up and each animal was attached to the one in front, the herders flicked the birch switches against the flanks of the camels and the pack train started up the steep tracks. After several hours the caravan reached the narrow gorge. During another break for prayers, two Pashtuns and an Iraqi came through the gorge on horseback. Speaking in Arabic, the Iraqi exchanged greetings with the herders and chatted up the headman while the Pashtuns pried open several crates attached to the camels at random—each crate contained a spanking-new ground-to-air Stinger with American markings stenciled on the side, along with a handbook printed in English. The headman and several of the herders had been trained by the CIA in the working of the weapon and would remain for a week or ten days to instruct the tribesmen after the Stingers had been delivered. Satisfied, the Pashtuns preceded the pack train through the gorge into a long canyon. As the trail widened and flattened out, the herders passed the ruins of hamlets lost in tangles of vines. Toward sundown, they arrived at the walled compound at the bitter end of the trail. A mud-brick minaret rose from the mosque inside; from the top a muezzin was summoning the faithful to evening prayers. Pashtuns emerged from the stone houses built against the cliffs. The ones who were devout crowded into the mosque; the others, along with a swarm of teenage boys, came over to look at the Stinger that had been set out on an Army blanket.

  Ibrahim, wearing a sheepskin vest and his Pashtun cap with the amulet to ward off sniper bullets pinned to it, strode across the compound. Behind him, his children watched from a doorway. Smiling jubilantly, Ibrahim greeted the Egyptian headman and offered him the creature comforts of the camp for as long as he and his comrades remained. The headman replied in elaborate Arabic that he appreciated his host’s hospitality and would go to great lengths not to abuse it. Ibrahim retorted that his guest need not worry about abusing his hospitality—on the contrary, hospitality needed to be abused in order to measure its depth and the spirit in which it was offered.

  Ibrahim turned away to join the fighters squatting around the Stinger. They looked like children inspecting a new toy as they gingerly reached out to caress the fins of the missile that would destroy Russian planes and helicopters so far away you could only hear them, not see them. No one paid attention when, in the gathering darkness, one of the Arab herdsmen swung closed the great double door to the compound. The others unslung their automatic weapons from their shoulders and nonchalantly started to fan out on either side of the men huddled around the Stinger. Several of the Arabs strolled over to a trough facing the door of the mosque. Two others started to meander across the compound toward the building that housed Ibrahim’s prisoners.

  Suddenly Ibrahim sniffed at the icy air and, threading his worry beads through the fingers of his left hand, rose slowly to his feet. It hit him that the great double doors, normally left open so that mujaheddin praying in the mosque could return to the hamlet, had been closed. Squinting into the duskiness, he noticed that the Arab herdsmen had spread out around the compound. He muttered something to his Shadow, who stepped behind him and closed his fingers over the hilt of the dagger in his waistband. In ones and twos, the Pashtuns, infected with Ibrahim’s edginess, stood and peered into the shadowy stillness of the compound.

  From over the rim of the hill came the distinctive thwak-thwak of helicopter rotors. Ibrahim shouted a warning as the Arab herdsmen opened fire. One of the first shots caught Ibrahim in the shoulder, spinning him into the arms of the Shadow. With a flutter of wings the yellow canary scampered free, dragging its leash behind it. Brilliant lights in the bellies of two giant insects overhead illuminated the compound as the helicopters sank straight down. Gatling guns spit bullets from open ports. One of the helicopters settled onto the ground, kicking up a squall of dust, the other hovered above the mosque and bombarded the hamlet below the compound, and the path coming up from the hamlet, with phosphorus shells. From the doorways and windows of the buildings women shrieked in terror. The mujaheddin who bolted out of the dust cloud were cut down by rifle fire. The Egyptian headman knelt and fired and methodically changed clips and fired again at the Pashtuns spilling out of the mosque. Then, calling orders to his commandos in Hebrew, he started toward the fallen Ibrahim. “Take him alive!” someone shouted in English.

  The Shadow drew his knife and, leaning over Ibrahim, looked questioningly into his eyes. “Recall your vow,” Ibrahim pleaded. There was another staccato burst of automatic fire—to Ibrahim’s ear it sounded like a distant tambour announcing his arrival in paradise. Soon he would be sitting on the right hand of the Prophet; soon he would be deep in conversation with the one true God. He could see the Prophet Ibrahim raising the sacrificial knife to the throat of his son Isma’il on the black stone at the heart of the Kaaba. The visio
n instructed him on what he had to do. Murmuring “Khahesh mikonam, lotfi konin—I beg you, do me a kindness,” he gripped the bodyguard’s wrist with his good hand and coaxed the razor-whetted blade down toward his jugular.

  In the attic prison, Anthony had drawn Maria Shaath into a corner when they heard gunfire in the compound. Moments later people broke into the room under their feet. “It’s a commando raid,” Anthony said. “But who will reach us first—Ibrahim or the raiders?” Someone set a ladder against the wall and began climbing the rungs. Anthony grabbed the small charcoal stove by its legs and positioned himself on the blind side of the trap door as it was pushed up on its hinges. A man fingering the trigger of a stubby Israeli Uzi, his face sheathed in a kiffiyeh, appeared. Maria screamed. Anthony raised the charcoal stove over his head and was about to bring it crashing down on the intruder when he said, in cheerful and flawless English, “Anyone here interested in hitching a helicopter ride to Pakistan?”

  At the Company’s high-walled villa off Jamrud Road in Peshawar, a young radioman sat in front of the transceiver with a crystal inserted, locking it onto a given frequency. He and his buddies had been monitoring the static twenty-four hours a day for the past week. Now, unexpectedly, what sounded like a human voice seeped through the background noise, repeating a single sentence.

  “He promised me earrings but he only pierced my ears. I say again. He promised me earrings but he only pierced my ears.”

  The radioman ran his thumb nail down the list of code phrases in his notebook until he found the one he was looking for. He raced through the corridors and stuck his head in the door of the chief of station who had replaced Manny Ebbitt after the kidnapping. “The copters have broken radio silence,” he blurted out.