by William Hood
Widgery blinked. “What can one hope to find in a list like that — a few dozen Walter Mitty types and a platoon of would-be storm troopers?” he asked politely.
“If I knew what I expected to find,” Trosper said, “I’d do the search myself.”
Widgery’s plangent plea was partially offset by an insistent buzz from Trosper’s telephone.
“Alyce Pinchot here.”
The assumption of Thomas Augustus Castle’s executive assistant that the mention of her name obviated all the customary telephonic courtesies irritated Trosper, and he was pleased to respect the security stricture against answering telephones by name. “Yes,” he said.
“Mr. Trosper?”
“Yes … ” Ms. Pinchot’s telephone manners were, he remembered, a not very subtle means of pulling rank.
“There are more than three thousand names on this damned list,” Widgery bawled from across the office.
“Start in the middle of the alphabet, and then work back to the A’s … ” Trosper spoke loudly, without moving away from the intercom. “It could seem less tedious that way … ”
“What’s that?” Ms. Pinchot demanded.
“Alan Trosper here … ”
There was a satisfying pause before Ms. Pinchot said, “Mr. Castle is on his way to the Controller’s office. They would like you to join their meeting.”
‘They’re not even alphabetized,” Widgery moaned.
“Just remember some of the computer magic they teach you at the Fort,” Trosper said, still speaking directly across the telephone. “Use a scanner to create a file and then run the sort command.” For all his apparent confidence, Trosper knew he had reached far beyond the scope of his computer knowledge.
“The meeting is right now … ” Ms. Pinchot’s throaty contralto had soared up the scale to a shrill soprano.
“Of course,” said Trosper, gloating.
*
Duff Whyte waved a letter-size sheet of paper. “Sinon’s come through, he telephoned from Vienna. The nervy little creep announced that we’re to meet him in Prague. Here’s the transcript of the call.”
Castle looked up from his sketch and nodded his greeting.
Trosper took a copy of the transcript. Again, Sinon had wasted no time on pleasantries in the prepared message he had obviously read into the telephone. “Mr. Peach, tell Mr. Whyte that for good reasons, I will meet his man in Prague. He is to stay at Hotel Păríž and be documented as Sam Anderson. On arriving he will ask for mail. My letter addressed to Mr. Anderson will inform your man when and where he is to find me. He must be prepared to meet me on very short notice and have $300,000 — in dollar and Swiss franc — to be paid me when he is satisfied my information is correct and important. Your man is to arrive at Hotel Păríž on November 3 and stay there until date specified in my letter. There can be no changes in my plan. I positively will not disclose my information until I have valuta.”
Trosper read the transcript again before looking up.
“What about it?” Whyte asked.
“I’ve got a linguist comparing the telephone voice with our tapes of Volin’s interrogations,” Castle said. “But I’m sure it was Volin on the phone.”
“So why meet in Prague?” Whyte asked irritably.
“Given the forty years that Moscow Center had its hands and feet in the trough in Czechoslovakia, we can only assume they’re pretty well nourished,” Castle said, his attention still apparently directed to his sketch.
“Damn it, Tom, it’s been the Czech Republic for two years now,” Whyte said.
“The Red Army is gone, but the Russian embassy is right where it’s always been,” Castle said. “The only real difference is that the rezidency is larger than it was four years ago, with a very senior colonel — Gretsky the last I knew — in command. You can bet that most of the in-place penetrations Moscow Center squirreled away in the past twenty years are in good order, and keeping busy.” He paused to hold his sketch at arm’s length. “Even if the new Czech security team is lucky, it could take a generation to peel the secret collaborators out of the police, the security services, the foreign office, the government at large, and the press.”
Whyte grimaced. “Tell me more … ”
Trosper ignored the irony. “You can be sure that the old agents, retired and otherwise, are kept as breeding stock — establishing replacements for themselves by selling peacetime spying as an avocation that provides a low-risk, tax-free second income.”
Trosper glanced at Castle, and said, “More to the point, Sinon’s message suggests he’s already waffling … ”
Whyte glanced again at the letter. “How so?”
“First, he says we’re to give him the money after we’re satisfied the information is important and correct. Then, at the end, he gets all iron-assed and says he won’t spill any beans until he has the ‘valuta.’ He can’t have it both ways.”
Whyte sniffed. “For a fellow who’s been telling us how much he knew about the old Moscow Center — and the Firm — this guy comes on pretty naive.”
Castle nodded. “If Sinon is Volin, he knows Prague very well.”
“I don’t give a damn how much of a hurry Sinon or Volin may be in,” Whyte exclaimed. “I’m not about to stand on my head just because someone drops me a note saying I’m to document my best operative as Sam Anderson, give him a wheelbarrow full of assorted currency, and have him in Prague in a few hours. It’s been years since I’ve seen a proposition as bald as this. The hoariest trick in the repertoire is to make sure the mark doesn’t have time to get his act together.”
“Isn’t this exactly what we’ve been waiting for?” Trosper asked.
Not to snap at a gift herring, but I’ve had two weeks to bone up on everything we have that’s pertinent. I can have someone briefed and ready to go in forty-eight hours.”
“There’s a big tourist crush in the republic these days,” Castle said softly. “Plenty of cover.”
“I’m quite aware of that,” Whyte said. “But even if Prague’s become the Paris of Eastern Europe, and I could send an entire team, I can’t even imagine what kind of unevaluated data I’d consider paying that kind of money for.”
“If you send someone to talk to Sinon, maybe get a notion of what he has,” Trosper said, “you could remind him that we’re the only game in town. If he goes to the Agency or the FBI, they’ll hotfoot it straight to us and the ex-comrade will be back on square one. Neither the British nor any of the NATO services would consider much of a payment without referring it to us.”
Whyte tossed the letter aside.
“Does that mean it’s no go?” Castle asked.
“Just a minute,” Trosper interceded, tapping on the corner of Whyte’s desk. “We’ve got no choice, this isn’t just some passerby whispering that the Firm is penetrated. Sinon — whoever he may be — wrote to you personally through a high-security drop that was blown in an important operation. He exposed a double agent Iran or Moscow is running against us, and he’s casually referred to the Troika. The baby’s well and truly right on our doorstep.”
Whyte tilted back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.
“If I were to pick the worst place in Eastern Europe for us to make a meeting with an unknown man, I’d choose Romania,” Castle said as he jammed the top onto his gold pen and slipped it into his pocket. “The fact Sinon didn’t choose Bucharest is another indication he’s our old friend Volin. We have no choice but to run it out.”
“What exactly does the Firm have in Prague, or nearby, right now?” Trosper asked.
“Damn all,” Whyte said. “We’ve never had an office or even a resident staffer there. By the time the Soviet occupation began to wind down, we’d already cut back on active work. All we had left were two separate nets, maybe half a dozen or so agents, all targeted on the Russians. When things began really to lighten up, I sent Steve Marsh in to have a look. He talked to both head agents, and one or two of the pe
ople down the line. As I recall it, one net was damned nearly hermetic, tight as a lightbulb. Was that Dahlia?”
Castle nodded.
“Steve thought the other chain was moribund. Probably penetrated and run by the STB in the old days and then abandoned when some of the internal security thugs found they had more important things to do, like running for cover.”
“That was Tulip,” Castle said softly.
“So what does that leave us?” Trosper persisted.
“Nothing,” Whyte said flatly. “Given our budget, Czecho is a very low priority.”
Castle twisted sideways, and with an effort tugged a red foulard handkerchief tied to form a sack from his trousers’ pocket. Whyte and Trosper watched in silence as Castle untied the handkerchief and spread an assortment of what looked like paper-wrapped saltwater taffy on his leather portfolio. Castle glanced up at Whyte. “My diet counselor put me on to these — only eighteen calories each.”
Trosper leaned closer to read the label — No-Kal Kandee-Klusters.
“Once you get used to them, they’re really not too bad,” Castle said wistfully. “Try one, Duff. The cantaloupe have no flavor at all, but the peppermint are quite tasty.”
“I’ll keep one for later,” Whyte said gravely.
Castle turned to Trosper. “The idea is to take away your appetite — they’re a mixture of wheat germ with a pemmican binder and artificial flavor … ”
Trosper chose blindly and said, “What about commo to and from Prague?”
Whyte shook his head. “There’s the telephone — with all of Eastern Europe listening in — the open mail, and express mail of some sort.” He glanced at Castle. “And I suppose we could mount a courier from Vienna. But even in the fullness of our peaceful new world, that’s not the way I’m going to run a quarter-million-dollar caper involving the Firm’s security.”
“We’re still way ahead of ourselves,” Castle said. “Before we close the file … He paused to make sure he had Whyte’s attention. “Or … start making reservations at the Păríž, I’d like to be sure we have consensus on why Sinon wants to meet us in Prague.”
Whyte shrugged. “Sinon is probably worried about a coup de main, and afraid that if he were to meet us in any of the NATO areas, Alan might try one of his famous stunts, and lift him.”
“Maybe Sinon has, or thinks he has, facilities there that we know nothing about, and can’t hope to cope with,” said Trosper.
Castle selected a Kandee-Kluster and opened the waxed paper wrapping. He popped the peppermint drop into his mouth and folded the paper wrapping into a perfectly proportioned square. He studied the square until, like a scientist deciding to reduce the size of a computer chip, he repeated the folding process to form an even smaller square. Then, satisfied he had Whyte’s full attention, he said, “Or, all of the above, plus the possibility that a little bird told him we haven’t any facilities in the neighborhood?”
16
Salzburg
“It’s rather nice when you think about it,” said Emily as she pushed the hinged window open and leaned out to peer down the Getreidegasse. She closed the window and turned to face Trosper. “I mean, to be staying across the street, a few doors from where Mozart lived, and at a place he must have passed hundreds of times.”
Trosper grunted a neutral response. He had always liked the Goldnerhirsch Hotel and the baroque aspect of the old city of Salzburg. But he was jet-lagged from the trip to Munich, and tired after the train ride to Salzburg. He would have welcomed a few moments to concentrate on his meeting with Lotte Friesler and to still the anxiety he always experienced before any operational activity.
“Turn the other way, look up the street, northeast, about eighty miles, a little southeast of Linz, and you’ll see the forgotten Austria,” he said sourly.
Emily stepped back into the room and gazed quizzically at Trosper.
“Mauthausen,” he said. “One of the early concentration camps, built shortly after the Anschluss. There were nearly forty thousand prisoners there, with corpses piled up between the barracks when the camp was overrun in 1945.”
Emily’s face flushed. “If I ever knew, I’d forgotten,” she said with a hint of apology.
Trosper pulled a 3 x 5 card from his pocket and glanced at the cryptic notes he had made for his talk with Lotte. It was no use. He was too preoccupied to concentrate, and increasingly uneasy about having agreed to meet Sinon in Prague. He had belatedly begun to question having agreed that Emily accompany him.
*
“You might take Emily along,” Duff Whyte had said expansively, when Trosper first refused to make the Prague rendezvous. “She’ll enjoy the trip.”
“Americans named Sam aren’t likely to visit far-off places without at least a token representation of their loved ones,” Castle added with a benevolent grin. “Emily will lend what Felix calls ‘some of the old verisimilitude’ to your cover.”
Trosper shrugged. Felix Waldman could document a chorus girl as the Queen of England in less time than it might take most operatives to obtain a driver’s license.
“It won’t cost any more for Felix to rig you and Emily as tourists than it would to cobble up a valid business cover for you,” Whyte said. “Besides, Emily deserves a treat after that diet of hardtack you subjected her to on your cruise.”
“It’s not cover I’m concerned about,” Trosper said. “It’s the blank pages in the file that bother me.” He pushed himself back in his chair and crossed his legs. There were times when he regretted having stopped smoking a pipe. Like the ebb and flow of Kim Philby’s stutter, a bit of creative fumbling with the paraphernalia of pipe smoking had occasionally provided even Allen Dulles with a useful pause in the conversation. “Send one of your hip young guys,” Trosper said. “Someone Sinon should recognize as not having the authority to carry heavy money, let alone make any big decisions without consultation. Once he’s gotten a line on Sinon we can regroup.”
“There isn’t time for anyone else to read in, and get to Prague on schedule,” Whyte said. “Aside from Steve Marsh — who’s out of the country — I haven’t got anyone who’s even been on vacation in Prague in the last three years.” He leaned forward, putting both elbows on the desk. “We also have to remember that as of now the only means we have of contacting Sinon is through that stupid magazine. If we don’t make the Prague Treff we’ll have to wait for Sinon to drop us a line. Considering what might be at stake, I’m not prepared to linger.”
“But there is something to be said for convincing Sinon that he’s not in any position to call all the shots,” Castle murmured. “If we let him think he’s got us by the nose, he’ll be just that much harder to bring down to size. If Alan gets to Prague on time and in the right alias, we’ll have complied with Sinon’s every directive.”
No matter what the issue, Trosper realized, Castle always placed himself slightly to one side, never quite agreeing with any proposition. Even his choice of words had an operational spin — in this instance, to serve as a goad for Whyte. The National Security Council issued directives, the director of Central Intelligence issued directives, and so did Duff Whyte. But agents and sources answered questions and took orders — they did not hand directives to the Controller.
“Damn it, Alan, that’s why I want you to take this job,” Whyte said. “You know the case, and you’re not going to jump if Sinon snaps his fingers.”
The goad had worked, but Trosper decided to wait for the next maneuver.
“What’s more, Alan,” Castle said, “you’re obviously the man to stop off in Salzburg and interview Lotte Friesler. She’s not likely to respond to any youngster, no matter how hip he might be.”
If he were to pick a motto for his nonexistent personal escutcheon, Trosper mused, it would be Numquam Postea. Never again would he assume it was possible to unsnarl one thread of a secret operation, or to deal with the single aspect of a complex case, without becoming enmeshed in a tangle of related issues. He turned to Castle. �
��Do you remember telling me that all I had to do was study a few files, rake over the data, and come up with recommendations? Two to three weeks at the outside? That was a month ago. Since then I’ve read myself nearly blind, been in New York, Savannah, and San Francisco. And now, after a detour in Salzburg, all that’s expected is a stunt in Prague, a city I’ve never visited.”
“Not for nothing do they call it the secret world.” Castle spoke almost in a whisper.
“I’d like you to take the job,” Whyte said softly.
Trosper got up, and walked past Whyte’s desk to the window at the side to stare through the mesh drapery into the enclosed courtyard. It was a move he had often seen others make, and it always reminded him of the unconscious way experienced agents glance around a room before they get down to business. It was as if they thought they might actually spot a clue as to the backup that might be hiding behind a closed door. The custom of breaking the tempo of a meeting by suddenly rising to gaze out a window, pretending to check for a stakeout or some other peril on the street below, was a quirk that Trosper associated with experienced case men. It served to break tension, and to offer a few moments more for thought before making a decision. Neither Castle nor Whyte seemed to have noticed it as out of place.
Trosper turned away from the window. “I’ll want a caddy who can double as a courier,” he said as he stepped back to his chair.
“Widgery?” Whyte asked.
Trosper nodded. “He’ll need documents, but if the FBI agrees, Grogan can probably get by with a tourist passport.”
“Why Grogan?” Castle asked.
“If there’s anything to this, we may be taking legal evidence. If someone has to testify, or go into court, Grogan will be in a position to do it. I plan to read about it in London and not to make my TV debut on the witness stand at a treason trial.” This was only partially true, but if Emily should insist on going along, Trosper liked the idea of having Grogan present.