The Kobra Manifesto

by Adam Hall

  I called him at eight o’clock and the line opened at once.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘All in order?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ I said and hung up.

  I’d been worrying more than I’d realized: three people were more than enough to hold down one objective but the opposition had been fighting all along the line and what had happened in Milan and Geneva and Phnom Penh could happen in New York. The three a.m. call to Ferris must have been from one of them, reporting progress, and they must have Zade still in their sights or Ferris would have got me out of bed for a crisis briefing.

  But he’d picked up the phone so fast, just now.

  Maybe he’d been close to it Discount.

  The nerves always start jumping a bit at the start of a new phase and this one was ultra-sensitive because the mission now hung on a fine thread. If they lost Zade in New York it would finish us: Ferris had said this objective was the last hope. Despite this I was briefed to delay travel in Washington for an interview with the only man in the whole country who could help us.

  The rain had stopped by half-past eight and when I went out at nine the sky was clearing for spring sunshine.

  I took an hour, rekitting. The bush jacket I’d bought in Phnom Penh wasn’t the right image for a White House meeting and in any case it was streaked with wall plaster and one shoulder was blackened. I was back in the hotel soon after ten and Ferris was waiting for me by the time I’d changed.

  ‘Briefing,’ he said.

  ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘You’re due at the British Embassy at 11:00 hours and the screening will take some fifteen minutes. You’ll use your present cover and if they try to shake you on it I want you to phone me at this hotel. All they need to know is who you are, not what you’re doing in Washington. Finberg has told them he wants to interview you and that’s enough for them. The Executive Protection Service does exactly what it says: it protects executives in the White House, and all they need to know is that you’re not going to assassinate Finberg at the meeting - or anyone else. Questions?’

  ‘Finberg knows I’m using a cover?’

  ‘He knows you are operating for a London shadow agency under the aegis of the UK government; he therefore realizes you’re not a bona fide journalist. In talking to him you don’t have to protect the cover image unless someone else is present - then you protect it.’

  I went across to the door of the room and stood there, What happens if the EPS tries shaking me?’

  ‘You phone me here and I’ll ask Finberg to come to the British Embassy.’ He paused.

  I opened the door with a jerk.

  Housemaids with a trolley of linen at the end of the passage.

  I shut the door.

  ‘At the embassy,’ Ferris went on, ‘we’d open up what would amount to a hot line connection by radio, Finberg to Control. But that’s last ditch. Don’t let them shake you. More questions?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Finally, you’ll be met at the West Executive Entrance by a security escort and a man named George Ryan Jr. He’ll take you to the meeting place, and by the way, he’s in the Company.’

  ‘What does he know?’

  ‘Only that you’re operating as a British agent. Nothing else.’

  I went over to the window.

  ‘How deep is the CIA in this?’

  The CIA isn’t in it at all. He happens to be a member, but be knows absolutely nothing about Kobra or our mission. He’s a courtesy escort, more or less - service to service.’

  The trees were in early leaf below the window but there were still enough gaps between them to take in extreme angles and expose normal cover.

  ‘Ferris,’ I said, ‘how important is this bloody meeting?’

  He gave a soft laugh.

  ‘Not your field, is it? Never mind.’

  ‘I want to get to New York and take over Zade.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. They’ll hold him.’

  The dark grey Mustang looked clean but total security wasn’t possible because this was the third floor of the hotel and some of the downward extreme angles were critical or even useless: I wouldn’t be able to see anyone sitting in a parked car within a thirty-degree vector from this viewpoint because the top overlapped the scuttle. But they could be checked when it went down there. The rest of the street looked secure.

  ‘But since you asked,’ Ferris said in rather precise tones, ‘let me say that Robert Finberg probably knows the exact target of the Kobra operation.’

  I swung round, ‘Oh does he?’

  ‘Probably.’

  That could make quite a difference. Satynovich Zade could lead me all over New York for days and I could finish up blown or lost or dead but if Finberg could tell me what the target was I could drop Zade and go straight into the penetration phase with Ferris working out the access. I could be there at the Kobra rendezvous in time to set up support systems, audio surveillance, radio monitoring, the whole bazaar.

  So at this moment the mission didn’t depend exclusively on our holding down Zade: it depended also on what Finberg could tell me. I suppose I should have known. Egerton wouldn’t keep me hanging around the White House if it wasn’t fully urgent.

  Ferris was checking his watch.

  ‘How’s the car?’

  ‘It looks clean.’

  ‘We’d better synchronize.’

  ‘What’s local?’

  ‘Ten thirty-nine. Leave for the embassy in six minutes.’

  I turned the knob and reset.

  ‘Ready when you are.’

  He. picked up his mackintosh.

  ‘Want to recap anything?’

  ‘No, I’ve got it.’

  Ferris saw me through the clearance at the embassy and then left for the hotel in a cab, leaving the Mustang outside. He didn’t want to stay away from the base phone too long because New York could come through at any time, The EPS people didn’t try to shake me on my cover but they were top professionals and some of their questions were throwaways, casting for slips, and I couldn’t relax.

  There was a solid front at the West Executive Entrance to the White House and I cut the engine and got out and a man came forward and said he was George Ryan.

  We shook hands.

  ‘It won’t take a moment, Mr. Wexford.’

  Medium height, crew cut, pleasant blue eyes and freckles, the knife-edge of his right hand calloused by practice. He watched the pass being stamped and signed, a fixed half-smile on his face to let me know that this was all a ridiculous formality and that if it was up to him he’d usher me through this gate without any hesitation.

  I didn’t think he would.

  ‘We’ve been wondering if it would ever end, Mr. Wexford. Then the clouds rolled away this morning and now look at it. How was it in London?’

  ‘Bright intervals.’

  Another security agent signed his name on the pass and gave it to Ryan, who checked the stamping and signatures and handed it to me with a gesture of formality, ‘Keep it to show your grandchildren, huh?’

  I could hear the gate guard using the radio to the west lobby door as I went back to the Mustang and got in. Ryan came with me and talked most of the time as we took West Executive Avenue to the parking lot near the White House.

  ‘I was in London a couple of months ago, took my wife along this time - she’d never been there before. First thing we took in was the Horse Guards’ - er -‘

  ‘Parade?’

  ‘Sure, parade. We really flipped over that, you know? Fantastic precision.’

  ‘I think your majorettes are sexier.’

  He gave a big laugh and we got out and began walking.

  ‘What do you think about our security here, Mr. Wexford?’

  ‘It looks like a hundred per cent. Are these chaps all EPS?’

  ‘Some of them. The others are PPD.’

  ‘I don’t think I know that one.’

  ‘Huh? Oh, the
re’s the Presidential Protective Division.’

  I counted sixteen agents within sight of the west lobby entrance.

  ‘Are there normally this many?’

  ‘Well yes.’ He invited me inside. ‘If you’ve read our history, you’ll know the office is vulnerable.’

  He asked me to show my pass to the sergeant at the door and took me deeper into the building, talking about London again and nodding sometimes to one of the agents posted in the cavernous ‘hallways. There were footsteps behind us at every stage of the journey but he never looked round.

  ‘In here,’ he said and opened a plain white-panelled door.

  Dark blue carpet, polished mahogany, framed and coloured photographs of various monuments. The acoustics were dead in here, in contrast with the high-ceilinged corridors and marble floors outside.

  Assume bugs.

  Ryan checked his watch.

  ‘Mr. Finberg should be along in just a few minutes, so why don’t we sit down while we talk a little? The meeting will take place in the adjoining room: I’ll show you in there and introduce you.’ He took a chair and tugged at the creases in his slacks and sat down and crossed one knee over the other. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet somebody from - uh - a British agency.’ He gave a sudden white smile. ‘How’s business?’

  ‘Catch-as-catch-can. How’s yours?’

  Another big laugh.

  ‘We keep busy, though we don’t get much help, that’s for sure. Guess you read the newspapers.’

  ‘Not often.’

  ‘You know what bugs me right now? These goddamn KGB people crawling all over the Capitol! Guess you’ve read about that.’

  ‘No.’

  A very faint whining began and I couldn’t place it.

  The air-conditioning was going but the sound came from somewhere near the window. Or against the window.

  ‘That place is a safe house for Moscow, no less,’ said Ryan, not smiling any more. ‘Hoover made a case in 1960 putting the Capitol off-limits for the FBI’s counter-intelligence personnel, can you imagine that?’

  It was a siren, that was all. Emergency vehicle, ‘I suppose he had his reasons.’

  He gave a brief snort. ‘Who knows what goes on at the top, Mr. Wexford? Who knows what reasons people have? Obviously I don’t suggest Hoover wasn’t a hundred per cent loyal to his office and his country that’d be ridiculous. But frankly I can’t think of any useful reason why Capitol Hill should be swarming with KGB men at the express invitation of the FBI.’ He turned his head as he heard the siren, then turned back. ‘The thing is, it’s created an invisible power bloc: a nucleus of thirty or forty KGB officers who deal with the Congress staff on a daily footing. Now if you take this situation to its logical-‘

  He broke off.

  The siren was close, howling past the front of the building. I didn’t see the vehicle but a rectangular blob of white passed across the ceiling as the reflection came through the window. The siren was dying away but not into the distance: I thought the vehicle had pulled up near the West Wing.

  It wouldn’t be police. They had their own police here and they wouldn’t use their sirens, ‘Is that a fire engine?’

  ‘Huh? No.’

  Ryan got up and looked out of the window. In a moment he turned back with a slight shrug. ‘Anyway, why should I bore you with my favourite bete noire! I lose a dozen friends a day!’ His laugh seemed slightly forced. ‘Have you met Bob Finberg before, Mr. Wexford?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ll like him - he’s a really great guy, I’ve known him for years. You’ll find him a little reserved, maybe, if this is the first time you’ve met. Later on, you’ll find he can relax with the best of us.’

  There were voices outside the room and I could hear someone’s footsteps across the marble, running. Somewhere a metal door slammed.

  ‘Excuse me a minute,’ said Ryan and went out, shutting the door.

  He was absent for seventeen minutes. I think he’d forgotten me, and had then remembered. When he came into the room his face was white and he spoke haltingly.

  ‘I regret to say your meeting with Robert Finberg is unavoidably cancelled.’

  Chapter 10

  SILHOUETTE

  The street was quiet.

  Four blacks were standing under the lamp at the nearest intersection, three men and a woman, talking. One swung a guitar case, laughing sometimes, stepping forward again, turning his head to look along the street, talking again, 21:15.

  They stood there for another five minutes and then broke up, two of the men going north to the next intersection, the remaining man and the woman turning in this direction and passing the Mustang without glancing in. The man was the one who had been laughing; he swung the guitar case as he walked.

  ‘Okay, he goes for the audition and they ask him who his agent is, an’ he says I don’t have no goddam agent, an’ they throw him out on his ass!’

  His laughter rang along the street The woman said something and the man laughed again.

  There was nobody else in the street until the first car turned the corner and stopped outside the hotel. When five cars had dropped their passengers I got out of the Mustang and walked back to the traffic lights and bought a late edition of the Post from the box and opened it out as I walked back under the lamplit leaves, checking once, checking twice before I got into the Mustang and shut the door and reviewed the driving mirror for any change in the pattern.

  At 21:40 a small police unit was dropped off by a van and took up station: two uniformed officers on each side of the hotel entrance.

  Cars began arriving at regular intervals, dropping people off and driving away. Burdick was due to reach the hotel at 22:00 hours.

  Ferris hadn’t been specific on all points but I hadn’t pressed him because my report on Finberg had shaken him and he’d had to get into immediate signals with London via the Embassy radio. I was on what amounted to phase stand-off and feeling very worried because there’d been two fine threads keeping us in contact with Kobra and now one of them had snapped.

  Post: Unconfirmed reports attribute Mr. Finberg’s death to cardiac arrest, and close relatives have spoken on the ‘intense strain’ he has been under for the past few weeks.

  I looked over the top edge of the paper and saw the pattern was a little different: two plain-clothes men were taking up station not far from the police officers, who didn’t appear to notice them. If they hadn’t in fact been plain-clothes men the officers would have noticed them and moved them on.

  Mirror.

  A similar pattern change. He was Short, slow-moving, and alone. He came to within fifty yards of the Mustang and then went back to the intersection. I didn’t think he was plain-clothes or FBI because he didn’t look like that.

  21:50.

  Ferris had told me to report by phone on the hour at hourly intervals but he never gave me anything useful so I made some enquiries about James K. Burdick, Secretary of Defense, since he was the most interesting man among Finberg’s acquaintances.

  Now I was sitting here wishing to Christ I could get on a plane to New York and take over the Zade surveillance because that was the other thread, the one that hadn’t snapped, the one that could snap at any next minute because Kobra had told us before not to get in their way.

  Mirror.

  The slow-moving man passed the telephone box again, « looking behind him twice in the next fifteen seconds. His image was wrong for an official service operator but he’d undergone basic training. He had noted the Mustang and the fact that I was inside it. He was keeping within the necessary distance of the telephone box and glancing behind him the necessary number of times per minute to ensure that if anyone tried to get into the box he’d be there before them. I assumed that he didn’t have to make a call on the hour -in nine minutes from now - but had to make a call when something specific occurred: the arrival of the Secretary of Defense outside the hotel.

  I didn’t think it was a bracket situation where he was s
urveying for any form of assassination attempt although information is always information and when he reported Burdick’s arrival he could be-triggering any one of a hundred chains of events.

  Two identical black Cadillacs turned the corner of the nearest intersection and came towards the hotel entrance, slowing.

  At this distance I wouldn’t be able to identify Burdick with certainty but the image of the man getting out of the leading Cadillac compared very well with the seventeen photographs I’d studied at the newspaper office. Also he outranked every other guest at the convention dinner by a wide margin and the four uniformed officers were now standing slightly more upright and the two plain-clothes men were turning their heads in a slow sweeping rhythm.

  The party of five men crossed the pavement from the leading car into the hotel and I got out of the Mustang and walked back towards the telephone box.

  The man inside was talking but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I walked fairly fast, with the paper under my arm. Every one of the twelve cars parked between the Mustang and the first intersection was empty and there were no cars parked along the other side of the street. The man had walked here, turning this corner. He wasn’t interested in me. He’d seen me sitting at the wheel of the Mustang but it hadn’t meant anything to him: his basic training was narrow focus and all he could think about was obeying orders and his orders were to make a signal when James K. Burdick arrived at the hotel. If the man had been police or FBI or any trained service operator he would have done one of two things: he would have come right up to the Mustang to check or he would have kept out of my driving mirror.

  I reached the corner.

  Note two people leaving blue Chevrolet and walking south.

  Note patrol car heading in this direction from the next intersection.

  Note light-haired girl walking north on opposite side.

  Fine rain beginning.

  Three cars stopped at the traffic lights, this side: two cars stopped at the lights the other side. A cab went through on the green and the lights changed and the patrol car slowed and prepared to stop.

  The traffic lights would govern my sequence of actions, then. There was nothing I could do about that.