Pausing at that point for dramatic effect, Bill Pemberton took a deep breath, gulped down the last sip of whisky in his glass, and waited as always to allow those around him to marvel at the extraordinary powers of his memory. Groaning, he then rose from the deep armchair in which he was sitting, his hand inadvertently reaching for a painful spot in his lower back, and took a few steps toward his large desk. He retrieved a key from a small silver box that was on the desk, and groaning again he bent over to open one of the drawers on its left side. From it he pulled out a leather-bound notebook, and then began browsing through its pages after returning to his armchair, stopping at one page and resuming his story in a voice that had become somewhat gloomy and slow.
“We poured all our efforts into the four suspects, and carried out an in-depth background check into all of them, a complete life history,” he continued. “We had two blue-blooded American women, Mrs. Ascot-Giles and Professor Baer. Not that we’ve never had blue-blooded spies before, and not that the Soviets and then the Russians don’t have the ability to recruit our finest sons and daughters. But when we checked out all four of the people who were at the institute, only one appeared to have a hole in his record. When it came to the lives of the two women, both from established upper-class families, we knew everything about them from the day they were born, through to the schools they attended, the colleges they went to, their family members, all well known, everyone eminent. The grandmother’s buried in the cemetery of a small church in New Hampshire, the father fought with General MacArthur’s marines in Korea, that kind of thing. We asked our German colleagues to carry out a similar check into Kurt Assenheim, the doctoral student. Waiting for those Germans to actually get moving can drive you crazy; but when they do something, they do it properly. In any event, Kurt Assenheim also checked out from day one. But when we looked into Professor Julian Hart, that’s when the bells started ringing.
“Julian Hart came to the United States in the early seventies, 1972, in fact, from New Zealand. He was twenty-two years old at the time, with a BA cum laude from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. Ancient languages and classical studies. He received a scholarship for postgraduate studies at Columbia University in New York and went on to do his doctorate there, too. He was at Brown already when he did his postdoctoral fellowship, and he stayed on there as a staff member, initially as a junior lecturer, then as a senior lecturer, and finally as a full professor. Toward the end of his studies at Columbia, he met his future and now current wife, Frances Green, who grew up in Oregon and moved to the East Coast after being accepted to college there. They have three children, two daughters and a son. The girls have already left home, while the son is a student at Brown and still lives with his parents. We made inquiries in New Zealand. A very discreet inquiry, handled personally by our station chief there, in cooperation with the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. Yes, a man by the name of Julian Hart does appear in the records in New Zealand. The records actually show several such individuals. But only one with the same date of birth as our Julian Hart. Hart was born in Auckland. His family must have emigrated from New Zealand when he was a young boy, because the Hart family stopped paying taxes there in 1953. We weren’t able to locate any relatives. According to an old and not very lucid neighbor whom the local security service managed to track down, the family may have moved to Australia, or maybe somewhere else, he couldn’t be sure. The old man, as I said, wasn’t at his best, to put it mildly. Early dementia, and plenty of alcohol in his blood. In Hart’s admissions file at the university in Christchurch we found certificates from a high school in Cape Town, letters of recommendation from two enthusiastic teachers, a photocopy of a New Zealand passport issued by the consulate in Pretoria. In a letter attached to his application for a living allowance, Hart noted that his parents had been killed in a terrible car accident a year earlier. We tried to make inquiries in South Africa. Our capabilities there are somewhat limited. The relationship with the local security service is very problematic, and we chose not to involve them in such a sensitive investigation. Our efforts to conduct the inquiries in Cape Town independently yielded only partial success. The high school Hart had attended no longer existed, and no one could tell us what had happened to all the school’s records after it was shut down, and we failed to locate the teachers who wrote the letters of recommendation. But we did manage to find a small report in the Cape Town Herald about a couple by the name of Hart who were killed in a traffic accident. The name of the man who died matched the name of Julian’s father, Jacob Hart, as it appeared in the records in New Zealand. The woman’s name was different, so we can’t be sure if she was Julian’s mother. She may have been the father’s second wife, or perhaps the reporter made a mistake. Who knows? In any event, the report noted that Jacob Hart had been a member of the Cape Town branch of the Progressive Workers Front, which we knew better at the time as the cover organization for the South African Communist Party. And that’s where we hit a dead end. We weren’t able to come up with anything else, but we didn’t like what we had found. The story of the early part of Julian Hart’s life troubled me a great deal. Too many loose ends, a biography lacking continuity and coherence. And from our perspective, the link to the South African Communist Party certainly raised an alarm or two. How were we to know if the Julian Hart who was born in Auckland, New Zealand, was really the same Julian Hart who turned up to study in Christchurch some eighteen years later? And maybe Jacob Hart, who was very conveniently killed in an accident, and can’t be asked even one fucking question, handed over his son’s personal papers to the KGB, and thus they were able to manufacture a different Julian Hart? Perhaps wandering around in some shithole in South Africa somewhere there’s another orphaned Julian Hart, completely unaware that his shadow twin has risen to greatness in the American academe, and is also a deep-cover Russian intelligence agent in his spare time?”
“Have you met with Hart since Thomas Langham’s fleeting appearance under the beautiful skies of Providence?” Aharon asked.
“Not officially. We continued to make discreet inquiries into his past. The FBI put a tap on his phone. We even sent an agent to see him under the guise of an undergraduate student with an interest in going on to do a Ph.D. on the subject of the ancient Near East. He was very welcoming, and willing to help. Meanwhile we weren’t able to come up with anything even remotely suspicious on him. And yet I know”—and at that point Bill slammed his fist down onto the small table next to his armchair, violently rattling the cubes of ice in his whisky glass—“I know there’s something fishy here! I,” he declared, “wasn’t born yesterday. When I sense there’s something amiss, I know what I’m talking about.”
“And how does the Julian Hart case tie in with the Cobra affair?” Aharon quietly asked. “You haven’t provided any proof of that.”
“You’re right. I don’t have any proof,” Bill responded. “But you said you were looking for a Russian intelligence officer with the hint of an Australian or South African accent who’s been living in the United States as a professor of the ancient Near East, and that’s exactly what I’ve found for you. A fucking Russian intelligence officer, with a background in New Zealand and South Africa, a professor at the Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, where—and you can check this on any weather site—it snows in December.”
“Aharon,” Ya’ara said, “I think Mr. Pemberton is right. The circumstantial evidence is pretty impressive. And you taught us never to believe in coincidences. I think we should go to Rhode Island. The trail leads there.”
40
DIMITROVGRAD, MARCH 2013
The light military aircraft touched down at the small airport in Dimitrovgrad just as the sun was setting. The sky had taken on a dark purple hue. It was bitterly cold, and Captain Viktor Demedev tightened his coat around himself before making his way down the stairs leading from the body of the plane. He was accompanied by two additional FSB officers. Waiting there for them on t
he tarmac, and trying to hide the fact that his body was shivering with cold, was the commander of the FSB’s Dimitrovgrad office, Colonel Arkady Semionov. The deputy chief of the FSB himself had called Semionov a few hours earlier to inform him that Demedev and his people were on their way to see him. Keep this completely under wraps, came the instruction; look after them personally and do all they ask of you. Got it? Every single word, sir. And please allow me to wish you good health and success. It’s an honor to serve you.
The guests from Moscow got into the backseat of Semionov’s car, with Semionov himself squeezing into the front, alongside his driver. They were greeted by the scent of an air freshener mixed with the odor of cheap cigarettes, and Demedev suppressed the gag reflex that threatened momentarily to overcome him.
“Anything and everything you need,” Semionov said, “just say the word.”
“I’ll tell you exactly what we need,” Demedev responded. “The interrogation room you have on the basement floor of your headquarters, along with a secluded detention cell on the same level. And you’ll also give us a room in the basement to serve as our accommodation. Three field beds, a desk, a safe. A bottle of vodka. One guard per shift, three in all. That’s all we’ll need. I want our presence here to go completely unnoticed. But if someone does see us and asks questions, simply say it’s a routine spot-check by general headquarters. That we showed up unannounced. I don’t want others to be privy to the inquiry we’re conducting. No one from your Investigation Division or the Credibility Department. And certainly not Alexei Volkov, who somehow ended up here instead of receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics.” The irony wasn’t lost on Semionov. “Is that clear?”
“As clear as a sunny day in mid-August,” Semionov responded.
“Make the arrest at three-thirty in the morning. I want a low-profile operation, without any fuss or disturbances. Knock quietly on the door, without alerting the entire neighborhood. If necessary, rather than make a noise, pick the lock. Don’t break down the door. I don’t want any drama. But the moment you’re in the house, cuff her hands tightly, so that it hurts, and put a bag over her head. And not a new one, if possible. A bag that others have thrown up in before. You know what I mean, one that’s still going to smell even after a thousand washes. And bring her directly to the interrogation room. We’ll be waiting for her.”
“Everything will be carried out exactly according to plan, Captain Demedev.”
“And one more thing, Colonel Semionov. I wish to thank you. I appreciate your efforts and expeditious organization. It’s good to see that we have competent commanders of high stature in remote locations, too. Thank you.”
• • •
Katrina Geifman was led into the interrogation room. The bag was still on her head. She was shoved down onto the chair set aside for her, a low chair, its seat sloping forward slightly, almost imperceptibly, toward the floor. “Take the hood off, please,” Demedev said quietly to the guard. “Release the handcuffs. And now please leave the room. We’ll call for you if needed.”
Katrina rubbed her eyes and tried to fix her hair. Her eyes were still puffy from sleep, and she massaged her wrists, which were now swollen, thanks to the over-tight handcuffs. A powerful beam of light was aimed in her direction, and she could barely make out the face of the interrogator standing in front of her, dressed in the middle of the night in a dark and handsome suit, his shirt white, tieless, its top buttons undone. He approached her slowly. “Katrina Geifman,” he said softly, almost in a whisper, “Katrina Geifman.” He stood behind her, and despite the terrible stench from the bag that had invaded her nostrils, she could still detect the fragrance of his manly cologne. He leaned over her suddenly and reached for her left wrist, gripping it tightly and pinning her palm to the table. With his right hand he then grabbed her forefinger and violently tugged it upward, until the room filled with the sickening noise of a bone snapping and the terrible sound of her screams. Katrina felt as if the screaming was coming from someone else. An awful pain spread through her and she gazed at her broken finger, which now appeared crooked and no longer an integral part of her hand. Her eyes filled with tears of anger and surprise, and she could see flashes of red, purple, and yellow in her mind, as if something had exploded inside her head. Her interrogator sat down seemingly in slow motion, without a sound, on the other side of the table. On the edge of her vision she could make out a second, dark figure, leaning comfortably against the wall in the corner of the room.
“Katrina Geifman,” Demedev said in an even tone. “Good evening. My name is Captain Gorodov. View this as a piece of personal advice: Make this process as brief as possible. Because it could also be a long one, and very painful, too. It’s your decision. I demand to know exactly, in full detail, what you told the spy who visited you at your home, a spy whose presence you didn’t even bother to report to us.”
• • •
Katrina Geifman lost track of time. She couldn’t tell if she had been there for an hour or two days or perhaps even longer. And if it was only an hour, then it was a very long and agonizing one. Two men dragged her to the detention cell and tossed her onto the bed like a rag doll. The blood was pounding in her head, her broken fingers appeared swollen and deformed, as if they were no longer human digits. Her entire body was crying out in pain. She asked for water. Air. All she wanted was a brief respite. Just a brief one. A pause before the pain resumed. There were moments when it seemed to her that there was nothing else in the world aside from the pain that sliced through her body, as if it were a lightning rod for all the agonies of the world. At those moments her mind was blank. Her thoughts weren’t her own. She told her interrogators everything, absolutely everything. All she knew about Cobra, and every piece of information on him that she had passed on to Galina Abramovich, who, as the interrogators had mockingly hurled at her, was actually someone else. At the edges of her thoughts somewhere, between the explosions of pain and waves of nausea, she asked herself if they were authorized to be privy to the secret. Yes, Katrina, good on you, she mocked herself. Preserving compartmentalization and information security even during your darkest hours. Is that really the thing that should concern you now, in the pits of hell, the inferno of your pain—whether the interrogators are authorized to know your secrets? During the course of her interrogation she hadn’t behaved any differently from the tens of thousands of other interrogation subjects whose flesh and bones had been crushed and broken. The human body isn’t designed to be torn to shreds with torture. And there was only one thing that she didn’t tell the monsters. One detail she had guarded as if her life depended on it. And it wasn’t even anything significant. But Katrina knew that if she wasn’t able to keep it from them, her soul would be crushed. She had told Galina that Brian, Cobra’s handler, was from a place in the United States that gets snow during the Christmas period. But she had kept that from the elegant officers from Moscow who had turned her into a miserable and beaten lump of flesh. They would never hear that from her! That was one more secret, a small one, that would remain hers.
Her pulse pumped shards of pain to every organ in her body. It wouldn’t let up. Perhaps the pain would never let go of her. A heavy darkness descended on Katrina Geifman, and she couldn’t tell if she was falling or asleep or passing out.
41
FSB HEADQUARTERS, MOSCOW, MARCH 2013
The adjutant showed Demedev into the extensive chambers of the deputy head of the FSB.
“Sir, I requested to update you in person.”
“And good that you did so. The less on paper, the better. This is”—and here the deputy head of the FSB gestured toward a slender man, dressed in a finely tailored gray suit, who was looking at him from the other side of the enormous desk—“the head of the SVR’s Tenth Directorate, the Black-Ops Directorate. We’re handling the investigation into the Katrina Geifman affair on their behalf, since the operation to which you’ve been partially exposed, Operation Cobra, is one of theirs.”
Demedev snapped to
attention momentarily and nodded his head—in subordination mixed with a sense of pride and self-worth—in the direction of the high-ranking SVR officer. “Sit, please,” said the deputy head of the FSB. “We’re listening.”
“I’ve completed the interrogation of the traitor Katrina Geifman,” Demedev began after sitting down stiffly in his chair. “She told the young woman who visited her everything she knows about Cobra. The young woman, known to us as Ya’ara Stein, although that’s surely not her real name, probably works for the Israeli Mossad or Israeli Security Service. There’s been a leak concerning Operation Cobra and they’ve got wind of it, and they’re trying to learn more. Thanks to stringent adherence to procedures, Katrina Geifman knows very little about Cobra, almost nothing. But she knows he’s a top-level agent, and she knows that we’ve been investing extensive resources into the operation. Including the assignment of a deep undercover combatant to serve as Cobra’s handler. She didn’t tell the Israeli woman anything about the handler, apart from the fact that he had a Canadian passport in the name of Brian Cox. I don’t think she knew very much more than that about him. Trust me, sir, we questioned her in a manner that left nothing held back. But I am concerned about the things she said.”
“Tell me something, Demedev, did she not suspect that the young woman wasn’t Igor Abramovich’s daughter?”
“I think she wanted her to be his daughter, and that’s also why she didn’t confront her on the matter until the end. It was a chance for her to return to her past, to recall the wonderful romance she once had, a love affair that turned ever sweeter in her memory with the passing of time.”
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