“Some people retire to an estate buried in this beauty while others aren’t allowed a moment’s peace,” Aharon grumbled from his comfortable position at the back, his eyes still closed.
“How can you see anything if you’re sleeping,” Ya’ara taunted him.
“Don’t start with him, do me a favor.”
• • •
William Ahab Pemberton received them dressed in a dark blue Chinese silk robe. He embraced Aharon and then backed away a little, still holding on to his visitor with both hands. “You haven’t changed a bit, my dear friend. Was the drive okay? Come, come, don’t be shy! Welcome to my humble abode.”
Humble it wasn’t. Michael and Ya’ara volunteered to make coffee for everyone, while Aharon and Bill went to sit in the den. A fire was burning in the fireplace, casting tongues of light over the bookshelves that covered all four walls of the room. A large computer monitor displayed the image of an ancient manuscript, but the language in which it was written was impossible to distinguish from afar. Open books with yellow Post-it notes poking out from among their pages lay strewn across the large desk. Just like the battlefield—the antique desk—of my first coach, Michael thought, suddenly remembering his internship under the Supreme Court president. Memories of the chill of the stone walls of the old building in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound came back to him, and he could almost smell the dust and pine resin. There weren’t many Moroccan interns at the Supreme Court at the time, he thought to himself. I wonder if it looks a little different today. He pushed his memories aside and returned willingly to the icy cold of Virginia in late February, to the dimly lit den and its bookshelves glowing in the light of the fire.
“Here we go, I’m putting the tray here,” Michael said, bending over a low table that was standing alongside the leather armchair in which Bill was sitting.
“We raided your kitchen,” Ya’ara gleefully declared. “Nut cookies.”
Aharon reached into the duty-free bag he was holding and pulled out a cardboard box containing a bottle of Laphroaig, a single malt Scotch whisky. “Ten years old!” he announced. “Not bourbon. Whisky distilled on the remote island of Islay.”
“I think I’m up for the challenge,” Bill responded.
“Michael, do a little more raiding and bring us four glasses and a bucket of ice. You’re drinking with us, right?” he asked, turning to Ya’ara.
“Of course I am. Laphroaig is my middle name.”
Aharon gave her a look of admiration mixed with irony. “Where did you find this girl?” he asked Michael, who had returned carrying a tower of heavy glasses.
“No one finds Ya’ara. She’s a free spirit,” Michael replied.
“Umm, hello,” said Ya’ara. “I’m here, right here.”
“I’m waiting,” Bill said to Aharon, who promptly began pouring the amber-colored liquid into his host’s glass, its smoky scent delightfully filling his nostrils. Groaning slightly, he then turned his attention to the ice bucket in an effort to trap a cube between the silver tongs.
“Here, let me help you,” Ya’ara said, and the glow from the flames in the fireplace illuminated the unpolished pearls around her neck.
• • •
“So that’s the story,” Aharon concluded, forty-five minutes later. “You now know all we do. We’ve come to you to see if there’s anything that maybe, just maybe, rings a bell from your perspective. Like I said, there’s an American side to this Cobra affair. Cobra’s handler is a Russian intelligence official who is living very deep undercover in the United States. He may have been born here, in America, or he may have come here at a young age. He appears to have an Australian or South African background. Whatever the case, the KGB entrusted him with the handling of one of its top-level agents. What do we know about him? Next to nothing. He’s able to pass himself off as an authentic American, his cover is that of an academic, an expert on the ancient Near East. Knowledgeable on the subject of ancient art. His Canadian passport identifies him as Brian Cox, but that of course means nothing.”
Bill remained silent, his eyes closed, the fingers of his right hand tapping on the armrest of his chair. “You’ve assumed from the outset that Brian is American,” he then said. “But theoretically at least he could also be Canadian. I’d like to consider that possibility, too. From my experience, however, Brian’s Canadian passport suggests in fact that he’s from the United States. It fits the Soviets’ modus operandi—disconnection and misdirection, and the more the better. If this Brian guy is based in the United States, his operational passport will probably be a Canadian one. And vice versa. Your Katrina also said he was from the United States. She didn’t say why she thought so, but she probably came to that conclusion based on the various indications she received, and despite their stringent compartmentalization procedures. So Brian in all likelihood is from here, from the United States, that’s the first thing. Second, he probably really is a professor. Field operatives typically go for a cover story they find easy to live with. They only change the particulars that could expose them. So where in the U.S. is he from? Yes, several regions experience snowy winters. But, just like your intelligence officer, by the way, my money’s on the East Coast. The newer universities in the U.S. have indeed started to develop faculties dealing in classical studies and the study of the ancient world in recent years. But if Brian really is an expert on the subject of the ancient Near East, he’s far more likely to be from Yale and not the University of Nebraska. And this is where I have something that could tie in with your story. It may be a little out there, a shot in the dark of sorts, but it ties in with something you said. And as a rule, never underestimate the instincts of an old bloodhound.”
Silence fell in the room. And although Aharon remained motionless in his armchair, Michael could tell he was on edge. He recalled their drive to Ashdod, and the way in which Aharon had described Hagar Beit-Hallahmi in the same words, as an old bloodhound. He thought about all those bloodhounds in the service of intelligence agencies around the world, mythological figures in modern-day secret orders. Oh, my, the countless tales and legends that were woven around them. Tales passed on in a whisper. He himself had felt so at home in his secret order, and only now, in recent months, had he dared to poke his nose out and catch a whiff, cautiously but with a sense of euphoria, too, of the air of the real world. And Aharon Levin, the bastard, was dragging him back in now by the hair. Just look at what you’ve escaped from, Michael, he thought to himself, this is what happens to someone who wastes his time in the secret services, all the bloodhounds grow old eventually, and they withdraw to some real or imaginary estate, eagerly awaiting the arrival of pilgrims who come to drink from their fountains of experience and wisdom. And those pilgrims are so few and far between, Michael ruefully thought. And their numbers will dwindle further, and the world will close in on those old bloodhounds, and get increasingly smaller. He shook off his thoughts and listened attentively. Ya’ara was also looking intently at Bill Pemberton, her eyes open wide.
“You know,” Bill began his story, the hint of a didactic tone in his voice, “even professional spy organizations make mistakes sometimes. And we earn our keep to a large extent from the mistakes of our adversaries. We wait for them patiently, for years on end. The trick is to be able to spot them. The KGB—or SVR, as Russia’s foreign espionage service is known today—also makes mistakes. True, not very often. But it does make them. And a few months ago, just before my retirement, we stumbled upon one of them.” He gave Michael a look that said it was time for a refill. Michael obliged, adding two cubes of ice. Bill continued. “More than a year ago, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, with which we have a close working relationship, exposed a Russian agent in Montreal. How they got to him isn’t important right now. Something to do with identifying the source of technological know-how that was leaked and found its way to Russia. The man in question is a Canadian who emigrated from Czechoslovakia at an early age and arrived in Canada as a young refugee. He was believed
to be a KGB officer who had been planted in Canada under a false Czech identity. On the other hand, he may have been a real refugee who was recruited by the Soviets only after he’d been living in Canada for years. Whatever the case, he studied electrical and computer engineering at McGill University, graduated as an honors student, and was hired by a Canadian avionics—aviation electronics—company, whose clients include among others the Canadian National Defense Ministry and also our Pentagon. The Russians very rarely meet with their agents. Every such meeting, and certainly one that takes place in the country in which the agent is permanently based, puts the said agent at risk. But sometimes there’s no alternative, you need to maintain direct contact with the agent so that he can hand over documents, so that you can pass on money or materials, so that you can thoroughly debrief him, so that you can keep his motivation at a high, preserve his courage, prevent him from acting in haste and doing something stupid. You know it as well as I do—an agent isn’t a robot. He’s an individual who requires human contact. With his handlers, too, especially with them.
“Like I said, meeting up with an agent in the country he calls home is risky. In our case, Canada would be the worst place in the world for the Russians to meet with this engineer, who was spying for them. Canada, naturally, is the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s home turf. That’s where it is strongest. There it can put its capabilities to full use. Canada is also a dangerous environment, because there’s always the risk of someone else being privy to the meeting: Colleagues from work, neighbors, family members, they all know the agent, they all see him on a daily basis and could notice a deviation from his regular routine. The Russians therefore wouldn’t stage any of the lengthy, in-depth operational meetings in Canada itself. Certainly not in Montreal. The SVR would wait for the agent to travel to a trade conference, in Paris, let’s say, or go on holiday with his family, to the Caribbean, for example. It’s easier for them to operate outside the agent’s natural territory, far from the watchful eye of the company’s security officer and the national security service. They can then create significant windows of time in which to meet face-to-face, for lengthy periods, with their man. But at some points it seems they had no choice, and they needed to contact him in Montreal itself. They could do so sometimes indirectly, and that’s usually preferable in terms of operational security, and sometimes they needed to make direct contact. Indirect contact can be facilitated by means of a drop point, or what we call a dead letter box.”
Ya’ara wondered why he was talking to them as if they were children, and explaining things they’d learned years ago. Perhaps it’s a syndrome that affects all retired secret service officials, the desire to emphasize at all costs just how much better they are than their younger successors. Bill Pemberton continued: “A concealed drop point under a shrub in a public park, or a wall in which one of the bricks is loose, something like that. Somewhere you can hide something—a letter or list of codes, even money—and then leave a signal to let the agent know that something is waiting for him at the prearranged drop point. Even if you haven’t read any John Le Carré—and I most certainly advise you to do so—you must have seen the BBC show Smiley’s People, in which a yellow chalk mark on one of the trees serves to initiate contact with the agents. Moscow Rules, he calls it. And they really were put into practice. By the Russians, and also the British, and maybe even us, too. Who knows?”
Bill Pemberton broke off suddenly, guarding his secrets, and appearing to have lost his train of thought for a moment. But he hadn’t. He sipped on his whisky and went on, his voice lower and his eyes half shut. “But as I said, this type of indirect contact isn’t always enough. And it, too, involves a fair amount of danger. The operation sometimes requires a meeting in person with the agent, even if a very brief one. To this end, the SVR maintains a network of, how should I say, perhaps couriers is the right word. We call them operative agents. Anyway, these couriers are trained to conduct brief rendezvous with their agents. In a crowded supermarket perhaps, on a park bench, at a train station. The courier and agent recognize each other, walk by each other, sit momentarily on the same bench maybe, something is passed from one hand to another, rolled up in a newspaper perhaps, maybe in a shopping bag filled with oranges. The courier is also sometimes required to convey a verbal message, because the agent needs to hear a friendly voice. So they do that, too.
“For reasons of operational security, the SVR assigns a courier to each of its agents. So that if an agent is exposed, or the courier is exposed, they’ll bring each other down and that’s it. Compartmentalization, as we call it in the professional jargon, or hedging. But when they’re pressed for time, or when a specific courier isn’t available or the particular mission is an urgent one and the commanding officer is eager to get it done and doesn’t give a shit about some theory that dictates how an agent should be handled—mistakes happen. Sometimes simply due to carelessness or negligence, or as a result of improper risk management. There’ll always be a reason, and it’ll usually be a good one even, and things work out in the end in general, because in most instances even when you make a mistake you don’t get caught.
“Until you do. And that’s just what happened in the case of our Canadian engineer. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service suspected him, followed him, and saw him meet with a young man on a park bench in the center of the city. Not far from the Prudential company’s building, if you’re familiar with it. A few minutes’ walk from his firm’s offices. In any event, the engineer got to the park and, according to the team on his tail, appeared tense and jittery. A few minutes later, a young man showed up and sat down next to him, without saying a word. And it was actually that lack of communication that caught the attention of the surveillance team. Usually if you want to sit down on a bench next to someone, you say something to them. You ask: Is this spot free? May I join you? Or you say something banal about the weather. In this instance—nothing. Not a word. Being antisocial or shy isn’t a crime, but the surveillance team deemed it suspicious, and that’s what counts. They filmed and photographed the encounter and then decided to abandon the engineer and follow the young man instead. After all, they could always go back to the engineer. He had a home. He had a job. They knew where to find him again. Anyway, a few minutes later, the young man got up from the bench and walked away. Again, without a single word to the engineer. The surveillance team wasn’t able to see if the two men had exchanged anything. They were too far away, and an analysis later of the photographs failed to yield anything concrete. The engineer had come and gone in the possession of a brown paper bag, probably containing a sandwich or a piece of fruit or something. And the young man had arrived empty-handed, but of course he could have been carrying something in the pockets of the light coat he was wearing.”
“And then what?” Ya’ara asked, after Bill paused and then remained quiet for a while.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. The team maintained its surveillance on the young man. He wandered around the city for a while, went into a café, returned to his hotel, and then remained there. Later that evening he went down to the bar, ordered something to eat, a club sandwich, fries on the side, a pint of beer. And that’s it. The following day he took a cab to the airport and boarded a plane to Amsterdam. End of story.
“But it wasn’t the end. The Canadians had photographs, and a visit to the hotel was all it took to get the young man’s name and the details of the credit card he had used. The airline and Border Control provided them with his passport details as well. Thomas Langham. British. An inquiry with the Brits revealed that a Thomas Langham did indeed appear in their records, but they had no additional information on him. They would check. Strange that he arrived from the Netherlands and then returned there, but it’s possible, it’s legit, it’s not a criminal offense. There are tens of thousands of Brits, and maybe even more, who don’t live on their small and crowded island. And the Canadians ran a check with us, too. They passed on the name and the photographs. Both to us and to the
FBI. And it’s always an aging spinster on the desk who comes up with the goods. And that’s exactly what happened this time, too.”
Ya’ara lit up, seethed inside, in silence. Who the hell does he think he is—that chauvinist? Do I really have to travel halfway around the world only to run into smug, self-satisfied, judgmental, condescending men here, too? She didn’t know why she was so angry. Why she could feel tears boiling in her eyes. After all, it wasn’t as if she was hearing such things for the first time. And what had he actually said? Nothing terrible. Simply disrespectful. She could see that Michael had his eyes on her, and the look on his face told her that he knew exactly what was on her mind. He placated her with a concealed smile. She calmed down and remained silent. Bill continued.
“Maggie, one of our longest-serving desk officials, made the guy. The young man. She picked him out from a photograph of a class of cadets on an officers’ training course of the Red Army’s, Russian army’s, Special Forces, from June 2008. Refusing adamantly to make use of any facial-recognition software, she picked him out using a magnifying glass. My eyes are the best software, she kept on saying to us. As stubborn as a mule. But she was right; no man-made software was going to spot him in the second row, fifth from the left. Presumably he was handpicked by the SVR recruiters and transferred from the army to them. Young, daring, just starting out. And that’s how he spent his initial years in the organization. Doing rookie assignments. As a courier for a more important and senior agent. That’s how everyone starts out. So far, no mistake. A bit of bad luck perhaps. Anyway, that’s not the mistake I want to talk about. Agents do sometimes get exposed. Yes, the revelation that the young man was a Russian pretty much tied things up insofar as the case against the Canadian engineer was concerned. From an intelligence point of view at least. Our Canadian colleagues were left with the task of gathering sufficient evidence to prosecute and convict him in court. But that’s not the interesting part of our story. What’s interesting is the mistake the Russians made thereafter.
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