by Carr, Jack
He slid his desk chair into his cubicle and said good-bye to his section chief, a woman much younger than his fifty-eight years, almost forgetting his charcoal-gray overcoat. Virginia was cold this time of year.
The beauty of the building was completely lost on him as he wove his way through the halls past men and women walking with purpose, some just starting their day. If any of the attractive females who seemed to appear from around every corner paid him any unlikely attention, he didn’t notice.
Logging out through the security checkpoint between him and the parking lot was a mundane matter, something he had done almost every day for the past thirty years. He nodded at one of the uniformed security guards who seemed to look right through him. It didn’t bother Oliver. He was accustomed to being overlooked; his puffy white skin, plain off-the-rack suit, and comb-over hair made him essentially invisible among the younger, fitter, better-dressed staffers he passed on his way out.
Oliver didn’t have an assigned parking space, even with so much time invested with the Company, and he briefly found himself turned around in the massive lot before realizing he had parked on the other side. He trudged his way there, got into his car, and lit a pipe with a wooden match. He had started smoking a pipe because he thought it less vulgar than the cigarettes that were smoked in abundance by many of his colleagues back when he started. To the new generation, smoking was seen as a weakness rather than an activity to be enjoyed or a tool to start casual conversations that were anything but. Still, the tobacco warmed his lungs and filled the car with the aroma he so loved. Putting it in drive, he moved slowly through the parking lot of the Central Intelligence Agency and out onto George Washington Memorial Parkway.
Grey didn’t drive the 1987 VW Jetta because he couldn’t afford a newer car. He kept it because it was the only purchase he had made with his first payment as a spy for what was then the Soviet Union.
A long time ago, Grey remembered. Before the wall came down. Before the world changed.
He’d bought the car used so as not to arouse suspicion, mindful of the Jaguar that Aldrich Ames had driven before the FBI had tightened their noose. Even then, large purchases were flagged by the counterintelligence division, and though the James Angleton era had long since passed, the spy hunter’s specter still haunted the halls of his former agency.
Oliver’s great-grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Russia following the chaos of the October Revolution and settled in Penn Wynne, Pennsylvania. They insisted on always speaking Russian in the home to preserve and pass on what was left of their heritage. Oliver’s mother, Veronika, continued the tradition, albeit a bit diluted, giving her son the gift of understanding the intricacies of another language and culture. What memories Grey had of his father were now the type that made him wonder if they were real, or figments of his imagination.
As a traveling salesman, Oliver’s father was rarely home: always on the road peddling encyclopedias, kitchen utensils, laundry soap, coupon booklets, and anything else that might keep his family clothed and fed. It was while selling bath bars during one of those trips that he met a widow in Philadelphia. As his trips to the big city became more frequent, their duration increased as well, until one fall day he packed a bag and never returned. Keeping two families had turned out to be more difficult than he’d imagined, and he chose the one that did not include his son. Oliver was six years old and never saw his father again.
Isolated and alone, Oliver and his mother moved in with her parents. Veronika took a job at the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles, leaving Oliver in the care of his grandparents. Though his Russian improved under their roof, his social skills stagnated. To his classmates he was the quiet kid with no friends, and to his teachers he was the perfect student.
He found kinship, not with other kids his age, but with the camera. He was fascinated with taking photographs, snapshots of others engaging in lives he could only dream about. With his mother working to provide for them all, Oliver found himself increasingly caring for his aging grandparents. Their deaths within days of one another during his sophomore year at Penn hit him hard. Two of the three people that he cared about were gone.
Even living in the dorms as a resident advisor and working for the university as part of a Russian cultural studies scholarship program he still compiled enormous student debt, which he offset with a part-time job in a small camera shop surrounded by the Nikons, Canons, and Leicas he couldn’t afford. He sent his mother any additional money he made doing research projects and writing term papers for the students who had time only to chase girls and drink.
Grey was in his first job as an accountant at Arthur Andersen when the Agency came knocking. The nation’s intelligence agencies kept close tabs on students taking a Russian track in college, and they continued to watch Grey as he began his professional career. They were looking for Russian linguists to be case officers and thought they had struck gold with the young accountant. It was during a meeting with a new client who turned out to be a recruiter for the CIA that he saw his first glimpse of glory. No longer would he be the awkward kid from the broken home whom no one remembered. He could be James Bond, the American version, anyway.
He wasn’t even through the first set of interviews, though, when he was diverted from case officer to analyst, setting him on a different journey. The Agency was just as in need of fluent Russian desk analysts as they were of case officers, and Oliver’s evaluator placed him unambiguously in the analyst category. Dashed were his dreams of playing the main character in a spy novel. Once again, he was not picked for the varsity team.
He found the training to be easy and sailed through without a hitch. When asked about Grey on peer reviews, his classmates had nothing remarkable to say. He rarely joined them for beers after class and kept mainly to himself, going home every weekend to care for his mother, who seemed to grow increasingly frail with each visit.
In those early years, Grey had worried about his annual lifestyle polygraph tests. He didn’t think he was homosexual. In truth, he didn’t know what he was. He seemed almost asexual to his acquaintances at school and work, though he never got close enough to anyone to know anything for sure. He had a hard time deciphering his feelings and used his studies and then his occupation as an accountant to stay too busy to deal with his sexual identity or lack thereof. One drunken escapade with a girl in college had ended in embarrassment. She was nice enough about the incident and tried to leave him with a bit of his dignity. That was the last time Grey had attempted intimacy of any sort.
During his first assignment in Central America, he’d asked a coworker out on a date not because he was attracted to her but because that was what he thought he was supposed to do. It ended in humiliation when she’d indicated she was not interested with an uncomfortable “no.” While other men focused their youthful efforts pursuing their sexual desires, Grey had consumed himself with work, unaware that a master in the dark art of espionage had other plans for him.
CHAPTER 12
Managua, Nicaragua
October 1991
ANDRENOV HAD BEEN WATCHING Oliver Grey for several weeks. The report from the psychologists back in Moscow was on his desk, but he merely skimmed it. He knew how to read people and how to exploit their weaknesses, their egos, and their desires; it was all about finding just the right button to push. For some it was money, pure greed. For others, it was sex: the honey trap was so successful that the KGB actually had schools where men and women were taught to seduce their prey. Individuals whose sexual preferences deviated from the mainstream made the juiciest targets; the more perverse the fetish, the easier the sell. For the Boy Scout types who didn’t have any overt vulnerabilities, blackmail was always an option. Drug a diplomat’s drink and take compromising photos with a young boy or girl, and you had them on the hook for life.
For Grey, though, Andrenov would need none of these techniques. All Grey needed was to be wanted. Andrenov would give him the missions that the Americans wou
ldn’t, give him the respect that his colleagues denied him, and become the father that he never had. He knew how he would recruit him, but at first, Andrenov couldn’t decide how to make his initial contact. Grey’s work rarely took him to the field, and he had the social life of a monk, so there weren’t many circumstances where an introduction would be natural. He decided on a “bump.” What would look to Grey like a chance encounter would actually be a well-orchestrated interaction.
Grey was an avid photographer, and Andrenov knew that he often took to the streets in the mornings or evenings, when the light was best, to photograph the city and its people. He had a man watching Grey’s apartment near the embassy, waiting for the perfect moment.
His phone rang before dawn one morning with word that his subject was on the move. Andrenov quickly dressed and headed out, steering the Mercedes sedan north on 35a Avenida. He assumed that Grey was headed for the nearby coast. You had to be careful about radio communications, particularly in Russian, since the Americans were able to monitor almost everything. Andrenov’s team had devised a way around this problem, and it had cost only a few thousand córdobas.
The taxi driver following Grey’s Volvo would radio his location, at reasonable intervals, back to his dispatcher. Andrenov’s radio was on the same frequency as that of the cab company and he spoke fluent Spanish, though the local dialect was a challenge. With so few vehicles on the road this early, Grey was easy to follow at a distance that wouldn’t expose the tail, and Andrenov would need only rough vectors to find his parked car. Sure enough, the cabbie reported that the station wagon pulled off the road’s shoulder near the beach. Andrenov drove another half kilometer down the beach before he parked, removed his shoes, and retrieved his camera bag from the seat.
The warm surf felt good on his feet as he walked along the hard-packed sand at the high-tide line. He could just make out the figure of Grey sitting on the beach in the predawn darkness, waiting for enough light to shoot. As he drew even closer, he discovered the likely subject of Grey’s photographic journey—a group of men working on a pair of wooden fishing boats on the beach, preparing them for a long day at sea. By the time that Andrenov reached Grey, the men were heaving the first boat down the beach and into the water. Grey was wearing a pair of jeans and a light sweater, kneeling in the sand so he could frame the shot he was looking for. He took several photos as the men dragged, carried, and shoved the boat into the surf. When they walked back up the beach to work on the second boat, Grey immersed himself in the controls of his Minolta SRT-101.
“May I join you?” Andrenov asked in Russian.
Grey turned, startled by the man who had invaded his solitude without a sound and immediately aware that this was the situation the CIA counterintelligence division had warned their employees about.
“Umm, sure. By all means. How did you know I speak Russian?”
Andrenov just shrugged. “What are you shooting?”
Grey looked at his camera as if it were a foreign object: “It’s, um, a Minolta. I bought it in Japan.”
“Very nice. I’ve this old German thing,” Andrenov said, pulling the olive-green Leica M4 from his bag. He grinned to himself as he saw Oliver Grey’s reaction.
“Oh, wow, that’s one of the Leicas made for the German army! Where did you get it?”
“The owner no longer had any use for it. Let’s not miss our shot here, my friend.”
Andrenov nodded toward the men dragging the second boat and raised the rangefinder camera to his eye. Each man snapped a handful of photos of the local fishermen at work. When they were done, Andrenov walked toward Grey and extended his hand.
“Sorry if I was abrupt, but when we rise this early, we may as well get what we came for. I’m Vasili.”
“I’m Oliver.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Oliver. Are you a photojournalist?”
“Me? No, I work for the U.S. government.”
“Ah, an American. Diplomat?”
“I work for the State Department. Nothing exciting. How about you? Are you a diplomat?”
“Me? No, Oliver, I am a soldier.”
CHAPTER 13
Aboard the Bitter Harvest
Atlantic Ocean
December
THE AZORES ARE A volcanic archipelago consisting of nine islands clustered into three groups in a nearly four-hundred-mile stretch along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Though the islands are located 850 miles from the continent, they are autonomous regions of Portugal and, therefore, represent European soil. Flores, named for its lush vegetation, is the westernmost island in the chain and is one of the least populated. With its high peaks, sharp cliffs, and towering waterfalls, its landscape could easily be mistaken for one of the Hawaiian Islands, with a temperate climate to match. The sight of so much lush greenery after weeks of blue seas and gray skies was startling to the senses. To Reece, it looked like Eden.
The northwest quadrant of the island between Ponta Delgada and Fajã Grande was virtually uninhabited, which is why Reece made his approach from that direction. The World Cruising Routes book, coupled with the boat’s charts and the small GPS, had allowed Reece to make it this far. An unnamed island sat just off the west coast, forming a small cay that was protected from the winds and waves of the Atlantic. Reece steered the Bitter Harvest into the protected waters, lowered the sail, and dropped anchors fore and aft to secure the boat. Despite the strong desire to swim to the nearby beach and walk on solid earth, he resisted temptation and stayed aboard the boat. He wasn’t sure whether anchoring in such an area would prompt a visit from the coast guard or other authorities, and at this point he just needed sleep.
He secured the deck and headed to the main stateroom, where he closed the curtains to block out the afternoon sun. Climbing into bed, he let himself fully relax for the first time since leaving the United States. Sleep came almost instantly and lasted fifteen uninterrupted hours. His bladder forced him awake, and he glanced at his watch as he made his way topside, confused as to whether it was six in the morning or six at night. After drinking from a water bottle on the bedside table, he went back to sleep for another four hours before finally waking refreshed and starving.
Emerging onto the deck, Reece marveled at the tenacity of the trees and bushes that found purchase, and therefore life, on the steep cliffs that ultimately met the white sand of the deserted beach at their base. He turned into the light breeze and closed his eyes, the familiar smell and taste of the sea soothing and calm, as if telling him he had been tested and found worthy. After ensuring all was in order and that he was still securely anchored, he headed down to the galley to make a proper breakfast. He cooked a half-dozen eggs, an entire package of bacon, and four frozen waffles and made a pot of coffee. Finishing every bite, he stripped down and took a shower. Clean, with a full stomach, a good sleep, and dry clothes, Reece took stock of the situation. He made up a checklist of duties and went about the process of confirming that everything on the boat was in working order. He inspected the sails and lines for signs of chafing, replenished the onboard fuel tank using some of the cans strapped to the deck railing, and confirmed that the bilge pumps were functioning.
A severe headache forced him to retreat to his bunk for a few hours, and again he found himself wondering if this was the one that would reunite him with his wife and daughter, but it passed as had all the others. He quickly grew hungry again and grilled himself a large tuna steak, which he ate along with two microwave bags of rice that he found in the freezer. An entire bottle of South African Cabernet Franc helped him go back to sleep, and he logged another solid night’s rest, uninterrupted by nightmares emanating from the repressed emotions of his subconscious.
Reece cooked another big breakfast before consulting the Routes book and studying his charts. His final destination lay across a continent, 6,985 nautical miles away. If he could maintain an average of five knots, he had a fifty-eight-day voyage ahead. If his sailing proficiency allowed only for four knots, he was looking at closer to
seventy-three days at sea. He was pushing his luck by sitting close to land for this long; it was time to make some forward progress. The seas were relatively calm as he steered south to clear the island and then east toward São Miguel. From there, Reece would head southeast to the Canary Islands before continuing on toward the Cape Verdes. Then the real voyage would begin.
CHAPTER 14
Brussels, Belgium
December
GENERAL CURTIS ALEXANDER FINISHED his breakfast of poached eggs and a side of American bacon, a delicacy hard to come by in Brussels, but being the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO came with a couple of perks. Putting down the local paper and taking a sip of espresso, he shifted his gaze across the table to his wife.
Even closing in on forty years of marriage, he still marveled at how beautiful she was. He couldn’t help looking at her like it was their first date back when he was a junior at West Point and she was what was referred to as “the Supe’s Daughter.” Back then, some cadets looked to the daughters of senior generals as a good career choice, a practice that often led to failed expectations and even more failed marriages. Cadet Alexander could not have cared less about Sara’s military lineage. She captured his heart the second he saw her and he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life making her the happiest woman on earth. Today, thirty-seven years later, she would still blush when she caught his loving glance.
“What?” she said with a knowing smile.
“Oh, nothing,” the four-star general replied, “just admiring.”
“Stop it, Curtis,” said Sara Alexander, playfully tossing a dish towel across the table at one of the most senior officers in the U.S. military.
She was the only person who still called him Curtis. To everyone else he was General or Sir. His close friends called him Curt. Their kids called him Dad. Curtis was reserved for Sara.
At sixty-one years old, the old man was at the end of a very long and distinguished Army career. His change of command and follow-on retirement ceremony were two weeks away. Technically he was still turning over his duties as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, but for all practical purposes he was done. His replacement was already in the seat, and it was time for General Alexander to step aside; the incoming commander needed to build rapport and set his priorities for his new command.