The situation was similar to Tekeli. The factory couldn’t support its former level of employment so people were not only losing their jobs, but their access to medical facilities and education as well. It was a hell of a situation with no good or immediate answer. As a result, he felt some sympathy for the plight of the miners.
While Trevor continued speaking, a young woman silently entered from a door behind him, expertly balancing a large tray with cups of tea and coffee, cream and sugar. She was tall, and blonde, amazingly well proportioned, wearing a sheer black blouse with a deep cut neckline, as well as an eye catching micro skirt that with four inches more material might have been almost long enough.
The men at the table, now completely oblivious to Trevor’s prepared remarks, followed the woman’s every move as she bent to serve them. Finishing, she slipped out of the door as quietly as she had entered, leaving the two women and the Kazakh assistant unserved. She apparently did not consider her associates to be as deserving of her attentions as her boss and his guests.
“Let me emphasize that it is absolutely critical,” Trevor Gunn continued “to finish this project on time. The Government demands that they receive their information within the designated time frame, or they will take action without it. There can be no margin for error.”
Charlie understood the importance of maintaining the schedule. Apparently, the other consultants did as well, and they had refocused their attention on the speaker.
Briefly at least.
The coffee server re-entered the room less silently than before. As the men watched appreciatively, she stooped and whispered something to Trevor who grimaced slightly before continuing his theme “The company is now insolvent, it’s …”
Charlie looked at the two women interpreters who would be traveling with the group to Tekeli. One-- Nadia he thought was her name--was a redhead, with very pale skin, and the older of the two. She sat ramrod straight, almost militarily so, taking in everything while also seeming to study her new associates. She was painfully plain, peering through glasses, and her complexion appeared faintly pockmarked by some former disease. The Soviet Union was notorious for not providing any type of immunization that might add to the expense of caring for their massive populations.
Her associate, on the other hand—a brunette, was strikingly good-looking, with olive skin and a faint hint of almond eyes. She would have been the one chosen as high school homecoming queen he decided if Soviet high schools had such a thing.
They were both conservatively dressed. Slacks and boots. Boots can be very attractive on a woman, Charlie decided. The two interpreters apparently didn’t share the same fashion sense as the director’s assistant. Probably a good idea if you are cloistered with a group of men at a remote mining operation in the mountains.
Once more emphasizing the necessity of finishing their study on time, Trevor closed the meeting by warning the visitors that Kazakhstan is famous for its poor communication systems, and they might wish to call home before leaving.
As they all filed out, Trevor motioned to Charlie. “Can I see you in my office for a few minutes Mr. Connelly?”
Once inside, Trevor removed his tweed jacket and draped it casually on the back of his chair. Extending his hand, he began the conversation with, “my boss, Vincent St. Clair, told me about you. He was very pleased with your conduct on our project in Ukraine. According to him, it was a very sensitive situation there, and you completed the assignment on time without ruffling any feathers.”
If he only knew, Charlie thought. He never wanted to get caught in a situation like that again.
“Since you have previous experience with us,” Trevor continued, sitting back in his upholstered swivel chair, “I will look to you to coordinate our efforts at Tekeli. Things are getting very dodgy in this country. There are a lot of conflicting elements at play just now. Oil company against oil company. Russians versus the west; and the Chinese are always trying to gain control over their neighbors.
“So far, President Nazarbayev has managed to keep a tight lid on the bloody pot. More recently, however, the Kazakh Government is beginning to turn the screws on the western companies like Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and the Italian company Eni, pressuring them to renegotiate their joint venture deals with the state-owned companies.”
The names of the local Kazakh companies rolled expertly off Trevor’s tongue, but were unintelligible to Charlie.
“ Wow,” he interrupted, “How did you ever learn how to pronounce those names?”
“Well, like you Yanks love to say--it ain’t easy,” Trevor replied in his droll British way. “If the companies refuse to renegotiate it could open up the country to even more investment by Russia. Or, for that matter, by our neighbor China who is desperate to get control of more oil to fuel their industrial machine.
A telephone rang on Trevor’s desk. He appeared oblivious to the sound, and continued talking until it finally stopped, or perhaps his secretary answered it.
“In addition, our friends in the Peoples Republic need vast quantities of mineral resources to support their expansion. Right now, they are consuming 40% of the entire world’s supply of lead, and would love to get their hands on some of Kazakhs mines such as the one at Tekeli.
“We sometimes feel, here in Almaty, as if we are dancing on the top of a volcano. You can’t get off, and if you stop dancing you burn. Not literally of course.” he added unconvincingly.
“Perhaps you saw my secretary whispering to me during the meeting?”
Charlie grinned, and nodded his head. “She certainly looks….ah...extremely efficient.”
Trevor laughed, “I thought you might have noticed. Actually, she is as dumb as a rock, but almost anyone can learn to answer the phone.”
His grin disappeared as he continued “She told me we were just advised by your Embassy that one of their staff members over in the western Kazakhstan fields was found with his throat cut. They don’t know why, or who did it, but they are pretty much on edge, and wanted to warn us as well,” Trevor concluded with a slight shudder.
“My God Trevor, that’s terrible. Throat cut. Who do they think did it?” Charlie thought it was better not to mention he learned about the dead agent the night before.
He had been uneasy about the project even before he left home. He heard about the armed uprising in Kyrgyzstan the day before he left Chicago. Emmett’s calls had not made him feel any better. Now, the dead agent, and Trevor’s analogy about dancing on top of a volcano had not eased his mind either. But, what could he do? It was far too late to back out now, and backing out had never been part of his character. His father once told him “The Irish never back out, and never back down.” Of course, he reasoned, that maybe why they have so damn much trouble.
The two men chatted a few minutes longer about their respective families. Trevor gave Charlie his direct number and left the room so Charlie could use his phone to call his wife.
Things were fine at home, and he felt better about his journey as he rushed downstairs to the waiting Land Rover.
6
Washington
Emmett Valentine was in a Russian mood. Definitely a Russian mood. He selected Rimsky Korsakov’s Scherezade from his file of CDs. It was his opinion that Korsakov, as a former officer in the Imperial Navy, knew how to write music that appealed to a man. None of this stuff that you have to turn up the volume to hear.
The music flowed through the small office as he studied the pictures received that morning of his dead agent. Terrible—just terrible. A bad way for a good man to die. Throat cut from ear to ear. Blood all over the bed. No sign of a struggle. Did he know the attacker? But, how did they know he was an agent? What was it he had learned that someone did not want known? Wanted it so badly they had to kill him to keep him quiet. He recalled once again that in the past, during the Cold War, the protocol among the players of the game was that you did not kill an opposing agent. Imprison him maybe, but not kill him.
But, that was the old
KGB Emmett concluded with considerable rancor. He never thought he would be referring to that era as the good old days. Now, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and the Putin managed presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, the FSB (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti or Federal Security Service) had been given free rein to do whatever they wanted to do —however they want to do it--with their over 200,000 highly paid personnel.
Their purview had expanded from the original responsibility for domestic security to controlling security for Russia’s borders; as well as conducting security operations anywhere else they thought was a threat to Russia’s sovereignty. As a result of their wealth, influence, and ability to strike fear in anyone that might oppose them, the FSB’s people had become the country’s new nobility.
Their responsibilities now range from countering the terrorist threat from the Chechens, to presumably running the agents that were recently apprehended and released in the United States. Now they don’t have to worry what anyone—inside or outside of Russia might feel about them.
Emmett’s experience was developed primarily during the Cold War. He often joked that men like him and Vincent were the original “Mad Men”, earning their spurs during a time when the prevailing national strategy was one of Mutually Assured Destruction. Then, both sides participated in a lethal arms race, balancing one side’s technology against the other. Now, it is just a phrase applied to the hucksters of Madison Avenue who spent their Cold War lunching on dry martinis, and banging their secretaries.
However, his mind wandered. Now he had to focus on the task at hand--as undesirable as it might be. It has to be them, Emmett decided. It has to be the Russians, but how the hell did they learn about poor old Barry? Did he unconsciously reveal something about himself that had tipped them off?
Highly doubtful he decided. Durand was a consummate professional who had been around for a while. He first worked in Europe during the last days of the Soviet Empire, leaving just before The Wall crumbled. Then he transferred to China where he fell in love and married an Asian woman. She soon divorced him for being too circumspect and uncommunicative. Imagine that, an agent that does not talk very much. The Agency reassigned him to Almaty when the divorce became final.
If he hadn’t revealed himself then, the only other conclusion that Emmett was able to reach was there must be a mole someplace who had access to information they should not have. Perhaps here in Washington, or more likely somewhere in Kazakhstan. That must be the case, Emmett concluded.
He had asked the staff, the shadow people they were called, sitting behind their desks, to prepare a summary of moles who were uprooted in the past that had used their position to acquire information and had sold out their country to a foreign power. Emmett flicked slowly through the pages, hoping for a clue from their history that might have previously eluded him.
Perhaps the most recent of them was good old Robert Philip Hanssen. They even made a movie of his defection. As a high-level FBI agent, he had provided his Russian handlers with sensitive national security information for well over 20 years. He was so trusted that the cousins at the Bureau had never given him a lie detector test, even after they knew that someone among them was providing top-secret information to the Russians about their activities. They were eventually able to uncover his identity by using fake information as a trap, and tracing it back to him as the source.
Emmett remembered the case very well. Hanssen was a practicing Catholic—even a member of the ultra conservative Opus Dei--who spent a lot of his money on an exotic dancer; and videotaped his own sexual encounters with his wife, to be watched later by his best friend. What a consummate bastard, Emmett thought. He sold out his country, church, and family.
The CIA, of course, has had its own moles. Boy did it ever, Emmett thought. Aldrich Ames may have been the most famous of them. He was a counter intelligence official who, along with his wife Rosario, passed the names and covert identities of at least nine U.S. agents, along with their counterintelligence techniques, to Moscow from 1985 to 1994.
The Agency was aware that someone was betraying its people for a long time before suspecting the source. Even when they knew that Ames had a severe drinking problem, drove very expensive cars, and spent far more money than he could have ever earned on his CIA salary, they still had not given him a lie detector test. They finally planted false information in a dead-drop he was using, and when he went to pick it up, they arrested him. Ames is serving a life sentence in a federal prison for his betrayal.
Reading through the file, Emmett tried to become more comfortable behind his large desk. The highly polished surface was devoid of any personal items that usually help characterize most other men. There were no family photographs, expensive pen sets, calendars or other correspondence waiting to be read and answered. In addition to the file he was reading, there was only a blank pad of paper, and an ancient abacus positioned precisely in the center of his desk. It was if the old man could leave at any moment, and no one would ever know that he had been there at all.
Apparently, defection has become an equal opportunity obsession Emmett concluded seeing the name Sharon Scrange on his list of moles. He remembered her, and the case. It had taken the CIA a long time to uncover her, as well. They never believed that a woman could be a mole. Yet, working as a CIA support employee at the American Embassy in Ghana, she was sleeping with a relative of the Ghanaian Prime Minister, against Agency regulations of course. Even after the CIA became aware of the relationship, they unwisely left her in place. She rewarded their generosity, or stupidity, by providing the Ghanaian Government with the names of all the American agents that were in-country. They were summarily removed, eliminating any future ability of the CIA to gather information in this critical country.
Emmett chuckled as he recalled that Ghana was also the country the Reagan Administration sent Shirley Temple as Ambassador. Poor Shirley. He wondered what she had done to be assigned to such a God-forsaken place. You had to give her credit though. She handled her assignment with dignity and never complained.
Of course, there was also old Edward Lee Howard. What a beauty he was. When Howard was finally suspected of spying, the former disgruntled CIA officer eluded the FBI agents, who had come to arrest him, by leaping from a car driven by his wife. She then immediately propped up an inflatable dummy in his place, and continued on her way as if nothing had happened. He ended up safely in Russia. Several years later, he died there at the bottom of a hill with his neck broken. People often wondered if was at the hands of his Russian handlers who got fed-up with his drunken arrogance, or the CIA getting even.
You can’t trust anyone were the watchwords agents lived by. Sometimes your allies become your enemy. Look at Jonathan Pollard, serving life in prison. He pleaded guilty in 1987 to passing information to the Mossad while holding down a highly classified job for the United States. The Israelis are still trying to bargain for his release.
Emmett was becoming terribly discouraged. So far, he was able to conclude only that it took a very long time to uncover anyone, man or woman, who buried themselves in a secret life. In addition, the motives seemed to vary all over the place. Money—sex—ego whatever. Damn near anything you could imagine.
The only consolation was the Agency had occasionally been able to penetrate the Russian KGB. Of course, the public rarely heard of these successes, which was a constant cause of organizational frustration. Occasionally though, something that was done right did become known. The most recent success, gradually receiving international notoriety, was that of Colonel Shcherbakov.
Emmett snorted with pleasure when he thought of him. The Colonel was a longtime member of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. The daily Kommersant newspaper reported he was the informant who alerted the Americans to the sleeper cell with Anna Chapman and her fellow Russian spies. It seemed that he planted them, and then dug them up. What a crazy business this is, he concluded.
He sat back in his chair reflecting on what he had learned. Certainly, nothing de
finitive. What could he do to find out who had taken out old Barry?
His mind drifted to James Jesus Angleton. What a name. You couldn’t make-up a name like that. Old JJ had started his career at the same time as Emmett—and pretty much in the same location. James Jesus grew up in Europe, the son of an American executive with the National Cash Register Company. He attended Yale, and subsequently graduated from Harvard Law School before joining the society-conscious OSS in the early stages of WWII. Like Emmett, he had learned his craft from the British. After the war, the CIA sent him to Europe as an undercover cold warrior.
Later, he returned to Washington where he became the Agency’s principal counter intelligence authority. Chief Mole Whacker many called him behind his back—but never to his face. He was universally feared and often hated around Langley, and was the reason a number of agents' careers had ended prematurely. However, he seemed to never uncover a proven traitor within the Agency’s hallowed halls.
Death on the Silk Road Page 6