The Sunday Spy

by William Hood

  “Not only photographs,” Trosper said softly. “Copies of documents — some with as high classifications as I’ve ever seen … ”

  Slocombe flinched. Pay dirt.

  “Mills!” he cried, his voice choked as if he were struggling to prevent shouting. “It’s that little bitch Mills who’s behind this.” He slammed both hands onto the top of his desk. “That miserable whore actually had the nerve to come to me with stupid lies about having been blackmailed. I ordered her to go to security at once. She promised, but by the time I got back to New York, I heard she’d been killed in Central Park, probably by some of her rough trade. The security people eventually came around to me with the whole story, dirty pictures and all. Now you have the brass to come into my office and try to identify me with the documents that little tramp was peddling like tabloid newspapers.”

  “You never mentioned that she’d told you about blackmail and passing documents.”

  “Of course I did, to our security people, either here or in Washington … I can’t remember precisely, but it’s none of your business anyway.”

  “There’s no record of it,” Trosper said.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help that,” said Slocombe.

  Trosper remained silent. He would not follow up, and was happy to leave the detailed interrogation to others. He kept his unblinking attention focused on Slocombe and waited for the diplomat to break the silence.

  “Can you really think,” Slocombe said, “that I would behave quite as stupidly as you’ve suggested?”

  Trosper shrugged. Silence was provocation enough.

  “Do you have any idea who I am, or the role my family has played in this country? Of the contributions we’ve made, dating back to the Revolution and before? Do you know that my son graduated cum laude from Georgetown last year, and that my daughter is following right along at Vassar? Do you think I’d risk their well-being for something as sordid as penny-ante spying?”

  Trosper remained silent.

  “Do you think I’d sell myself and my position in life for a few thousand dollars a month? Can you imagine that even the opportunity to have one’s views considered at the highest level by a world power would be important enough for me to risk all of that?”

  “I think the answer is yes to every one of your questions,” Trosper said. “On a more operational level, there are the photographs of you exchanging airline bags with a courier.”

  “Just tell your chums to bring charges, and we’ll see where the truth lies.”

  “The truth is that Charlotte Mills was murdered just to save your rotten carcass … ”

  Slocombe got up from behind his desk. “I’ve had enough of this. You’ll leave now, or I’ll call security and have you dragged out.” Trosper got up and stepped toward the door.

  “You’ll understand,” Slocombe said, “that you’ve given me no choice but to report this to the Secretary personally … ”

  “If that’s your decision, you’re making a serious mistake … ”

  “Now, I’m all but late for a Security Council meeting,” Slocombe said, “and that’s not my custom.”

  “You’ve got twenty-four hours to reconsider the most important decision you’re ever going to make,” Trosper said. And unless you confess, he thought, no one will lay a glove on you.

  47

  Moscow

  “Which brings us to the impending loss of our friend in New York,” Koltsov said. The chief of operations hunched forward and peered intently across his broad desk. It irritated him that the section chief had left the most important part of the afternoon briefing to the last.

  “True name Harrison Slocombe,” Igor Maisky said. “An old family, aristocratic.”

  “Has the problem been resolved?”

  Maisky shook his head. “Slocombe is badly shaken, but he refused our offer of asylum, a comfortable retirement here, and, in time, public honors … ” His voice faded as he attempted to determine whether the chief of operations was clearing his throat or laughing.

  “And all that with a straight face?” Koltsov slouched over his desk, his hand shading his eyes from the desk lamp.

  “I don’t understand,” Maisky said. “Boris Ragulin has been Rezident in New York for three years. He knows the Americans perfectly. I’m sure he stressed the absolute need to avoid arrest and to escape along the route we recommended.”

  “How are Slocombe’s nerves?” Koltsov said. He had worked with Ragulin in Paris and did not need to be reminded that his friend was one of the most able officers in the service.

  “Please?”

  “Is Slocombe likely to break in fucking pieces?”

  “Oh, no,” said Maisky. “Solid as a rock, as I said, something of an aristocrat.”

  “Where’s Navrov?” Maisky’s assumption that he could discuss Slocombe without the presence of the man who had recruited and nurtured him also annoyed Koltsov.

  “He’s retired, but — ”

  “I know he’s bloody retired … ”

  “ … but I have him standing by.”

  Before Maisky could jump to his feet, Koltsov barked a command into the intercom. The door swung ajar and a slim, gray-haired man stepped into the office.

  Koltsov strode across the room to clasp Navrov in a bear hug. “Still the same shit-face spy, who actually liked playing diplomat? Now a businessman?” He released his grip, but held Navrov at arms’ length. “Foreign clothes … polished shoes … there’s no end to you.” After a second embrace, he shoved Navrov toward a chair beside the desk.

  “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m a retired diplomat — now chief executive officer of Moscow Help,” Navrov said with a broad smile. “We make introductions, provide researchers, interpreters, secretaries, and an occasional bit of fluff to our visiting benefactors, the representatives of the Western business world.” He tossed a business card onto the desk.

  Koltsov glanced at the card and turned to Maisky. “Fluff,” he said, shaking his head. “In my day we used a different vocabulary.” He bent to pull a bottle from the cabinet behind his desk. “A drop of vodka for my prosperous old comrade who probably prefers scotch whiskey?”

  Navrov nodded.

  “You know that your protégé Slocombe is facedown in the crap?” Koltsov growled.

  “I’ve been told.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Someone must have talked,” Navrov said. “Slocombe had four, maybe five years left. A real loss.”

  “What will they do, the Americans?”

  Maisky started to speak but Koltsov waved him to silence.

  Navrov emptied his glass. “There’ll be no double game, the Americans don’t think that way any more. In their hearts they’re Puritans, on the job they act like cops. Slocombe sinned, therefore he must be punished. They won’t even think about playing him back against us.”

  “So what will they do?”

  “Everything has to be legal,” Navrov said. “First they question him. He’ll deny everything. The FBI and the State security people will continue to investigate — they’re good at that. They’ll interrogate again, stiffer questions, more pressure. But they’re not so good at that. Slocombe will admit nothing. The investigation won’t reveal anything — perhaps a little extra money. Then comes a hearing. If Slocombe offers to retire, the board will accept rather than risk a trial they can’t afford to lose. They will deny him a pension — one way the sinner can pay for his broken faith.”

  “What does that leave us?”

  Navrov shook his head. “Not much. Slocombe’s wife has the social position that Slocombe has always claimed to have. He was a clever boy, but not such a clever man. He spent so much time pretending to be something he was not that he wasted the promise he had. Without our support, he’d never have got as far as he did. Now he’ll find that American women of his wife’s class don’t like to support men. Her friends, who always saw through his pretensions, will begin to piss on him. Soon, everything that means anything to him will
have disappeared … ”

  Koltsov moved to refill the glasses. “And then?”

  Navrov shrugged. “Slocombe might be tempted to try to make a deal — admit that he may have talked a bit too freely to some of his Russian contacts, and swap this for a resignation without prejudice. This would let him keep his pension. A good interrogator might be able to work that into a full confession.”

  Koltsov shook his head. “Aside from the names of two or three of his handlers, and what he can remember having sold to us, the most Slocombe’s got to give them is an inkling of just how much else we know, and maybe make them start wondering how we learned it. The Americans won’t make a public show of a confession like that.”

  “There’s another possibility,” Navrov said with a faint smile. “‘The Slocombe Story. A respected, senior State Department official — behind the mask, a villainous spy.’” Navrov parodied the pompous voice of a TV newsman. “That’s the sort of thing one of your hungry pensioners might sell to the foreign press.”

  “Possible,” Koltsov said heavily. “Always possible … ”

  “A scandal like that will puff up like a case of gangrene, with congressmen threatening to screw our economy just to convince their voters that they’re democracy’s only defense against the evil empire.”

  “To be avoided,” Koltsov said, glowering at Maisky. “The days when I could stuff blown operations down the boss’s throat are over. I used to say, ‘If you want top-secret data, you’d better be prepared for an occasional screwup.’” He reached for the vodka bottle. “In the old days an occasional shot of publicity could be a plus. It showed outsiders what we can produce and convinced potential collaborators that our pockets are deep. In those days we could live with a little scandal. Now that we’re beggars, we’ve no choice but to avoid offending our benefactors. So, we keep our ass off the front pages.”

  “There’s no question — Slocombe can’t be allowed to go public,” Navrov said.

  “So what do we do?” said Maisky.

  “It’s not what you do, it’s what Slocombe does … ”

  “And what’s that?” Maisky said with a smug glance at Koltsov.

  “Slocombe dies, maybe suicide,” Navrov said. “Once he’s dead, even if there’s a leak, the scandal will be minimal. The ‘useful idiots’ — as Vladimir Ilyich used to call them — will rally around and say that the right-wing press is kicking the corpse of a great American who can’t fight back … ”

  “Do me a favor, Mr. Businessman, don’t quote Lenin in this office … ”

  “Slocombe’s too much of an egotist,” Maisky said. “They don’t commit suicide … ”

  “It’s not his decision to make, you ass,” said Koltsov.

  “Talk to Ragulin,” Navrov said. “He’ll be able to recommend something specific … ”

  48

  Washington, D.C.

  The State Department security representatives thanked Duff Whyte, shook hands, and filed out. Charlie Mayo, Mike Grogan, and Trosper remained behind. The pocket recorder Trosper had carried was scratchy with static and had little base response, but the fidelity was adequate and they had played the tape twice.

  From his chair at the side, Castle looked up from his notepad. “This is depressing enough without you people looking as if you were huddled around a burned-out campfire.”

  “The fire may be out,” Grogan said, “but it sure was burning when Alan hit that creep. In ten minutes, the ashes of everything Minister Counselor Slocombe treasured went straight down the toilet.”

  Whyte leaned back, his arms folded across his chest, and turned to Trosper. “You were right, of course. It was out of the question for anyone as self-centered as Slocombe to crumble the first time he’s challenged.”

  “All the same, Slocombe will have big trouble explaining his admission that Charlotte Mills had come to him with a confession,” Grogan said.

  Castle shook his head. “All Slocombe has to admit is that he made Mills promise to tell everything to the security staff, that he didn’t necessarily believe her story but was out of the country and couldn’t pursue it. By the time Volin disclosed his version, Slocombe will say that he had nothing to add to it, and admit that he was so embarrassed by having failed to follow up on his instruction to Mills that he mistakenly chose not to bring it up.”

  “I suppose we ought to be glad you’re not his lawyer,” Grogan said, his face flushed.

  “After that,” Castle said, “Slocombe will stonewall every allegation.” He snapped his leather folder shut. “I gather that State security will begin with Slocombe tomorrow?”

  “Everything has been cleared at the top,” Mayo said.

  Grogan turned to Trosper. “It’s really rotten luck that Mills felt she had to go to a stuffed shirt like Slocombe for help.”

  “She was desperate,” Trosper said. “She’d been living with this every hour of her life.”

  “Compare her with that money-grubbing little creep, Pickett,” Grogan said.

  “I have,” said Trosper.

  49

  Key West

  Navrov glanced along the narrow sidewalk toward the fence edging the cemetery a hundred yards ahead. Nothing of interest. He had moved idly from the kickshaw commercialism of Duval Street as if uncertain of finding his way along the hushed streets and shuttered houses of the old town. Now he slowed his gait to check the automobiles along each side of Frances Street. Nothing.

  “The truth now, did you recognize me at once?” Navrov lowered himself into the sling chair beneath the lazy overhead fan in the living room.

  “I was surprised, but of course I knew you,” Broom said.

  “When you hesitated, it reminded me how much I must have changed since Vienna.”

  “For God’s sake, we were twenty years younger then. You were not nearly so well turned out, but much more intense.”

  “To lost intensity.” Navrov raised his glass. “If that’s not too grim a toast … ”

  “It will do,” Broom said as she took a sip of wine.

  “An old friend insisted I come here,” Navrov said. “Until I read the file, I had no idea it was you I would be meeting … ”

  “I’m glad to have been such a secret. There were times when I worried about it … ”

  “I’ve been out of things for four years — completely divorced from the work,” he said. “Now that free enterprise rages, I’ve got my own business. This is the first time I’ve so much as been asked anything, let alone to do a favor.”

  “Rather an odd sort of favor, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the last thing I would have expected — to find you living alone, and as isolated as this.”

  “I’ve not always been all that alone,” she said. “But you must have a wife and family?”

  Navrov laughed. “It’s a story you’ve heard a dozen times — Anna enjoyed the privileges, but resented everything else about my work. She left six weeks after I quit the service. The last I knew she was Mrs. General someone or other.” He took a sip of wine. “Most of our people tolerate the lonely spells, but it’s hard to think of you living in this backwater.”

  “As you put it, perhaps there’s not as much intensity … ”

  Navrov swirled the wine in his glass and glanced speculatively at the paintings stacked against the wall. “The years have been good to you … ”

  “You’re being kind … ”

  “Not at all,” he said. “It’s a simple fact, you’re just as I imagined you would be … ”

  “As much as I might like it,” she said, “I’m not the person you remember. I’m not even me anymore.”

  Navrov shook his head. “You make a mistake thinking too much about the work. We’ve been through a sort of war, but it’s not as serious as all that … ”

  “Perhaps not for you.”

  “Not for any of us,” he said. “After a few months on your own you’ll begin to see it in perspective.”

  “I’ve almost always been on my own.”
<
br />   “Not in Vienna,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I was terribly frightened in Vienna … ”

  “It didn’t show,” he said. “I’ve always thought of you as one of those great cats in Africa, a leopard, quite beautiful, solitary and quick and very strong.”

  “That wasn’t me at all. I accepted Leonid Ilyich’s offer because it was like a pardon for what had been done to my family. Even though I thought Brezhnev was an old fool, I have to admit that he made me feel as if I were part of something, like the way people must have felt during the war. I actually looked forward to joining the fight, but like a conscripted soldier I was frightened at leaving home, terrified at the thought of the work, praying that it would all be over before I was called to do anything … ”

  “How long did we have,” Navrov said. “Six weeks?”

  “Longer,” she said, smiling. “Two months, a little more. You were very good for me. So confident, even then so sure that everything at home was on the verge of change, and that our miserable work would help turn things around.”

  “I never thought I’d see you again,” he said abruptly.

  Broom stiffened and turned away. “Why are you here now — because they think I need special attention if I’m to do something more?”

  Navrov pulled himself from the canvas chair. “I wouldn’t have come if that was the reason. Surely, you know that.”

  “Then why? I was promised it would be finished after that thing in the park.” Tears spilled down Broom’s cheeks. “Why did they have to do that?”

  “You mean the woman?” Navrov said, taking her in his arms.

  “Of course I mean the woman … What could she have done?”

  “It was to protect something,” he said, touching her hair as if to shape it. “Something they thought they couldn’t afford to lose.”

  He stepped back, and for a moment held her at arms’ length. “Surely you know I’m not here to defend the new crowd. Their words would stick to my tongue, but you must have some idea how serious things are at home. The government stumbles from crisis to crisis. The army is almost paralyzed but always a threat to the leadership. It will be five years, maybe ten, before we can live without the life support the West is doling out. Moscow, and particularly the service, can’t tolerate any more scandal.”