by John Weisman
“Okay.” Sam centered the defector in his sights. “Tell me what you have.”
“There’s so much,” Howard began. “Hundreds of pages—”
“Hundreds.”
“Yes, hundreds.”
“Where are they? Did you bring one page with you, Ed? Just one.”
Howard’s silence was all the answer Sam needed. “He’s fabricating, Senator.”
“I’m telling the truth, Sam.”
Sam’s expression darkened. “Don’t insult me any more than you already have, Ed. Give me one straightforward answer—just one: Where did you put all these alleged documents?”
“They are in a safe place.” “Don’t play games. No more chaff, Ed.” Howard’s dark eyes locked on Sam’s. “All right, Sam. Let’s talk about an important case.”
“Why?”
“You want me to demonstrate good faith.” Howard smiled—somewhat malevolently, Sam thought. “All right,” the defector continued, “that’s fair. After all, you were kind enough to come at a moment’s notice to meet with me. So, let’s talk about a case with real significance. A case that is relevant to the counterintelligence problems America is facing right now. Let’s talk about Pavel Baranov.”
CHAPTER 8
SAM TRIED to maintain his composure. But the earlier conversation with O’Neill had brought all the nasty memories flooding back. He fought the surge of emotion. “Pavel Baranov,” he said.
“Yes, Baranov.” Howard’s eyes flashed. “You remember Pavel Baranov, don’t you, Sam? Brigadier general? Close friend of General Lebed’s? One of your developmentals. He was killed during a rendezvous with you.”
“I remember Baranov very well, Ed.”
“Your fists are clenched,” Howard said. “Bad tradecraft, Sam. Tacit reaction. Projection. Body language and all that. Very basic mistake, Sam.” The defector displayed visible satisfaction as he watched Sam’s face redden. “I doubled Baranov against you. It was a hugely successful operation.”
Sam finally reined his emotions in. “How did you spot him?”
“By accident, actually.” Howard caught Sam’s expression of momentary confusion and he half smiled. “President Yeltsin wanted Lebed watched,” he explained. “He was afraid of a coup from the Army—with reason, too, if you re member. And so, within a week after Putin took over FSB in August 1998, he ordered surveillance on all of Lebed’s old staff from Kabul. Pavel Baranov may have only been a junior officer in Kabul, but he was a drinking buddy of Lebed’s. So we tailed him.” He shrugged. “And then ten days later we saw you. You were at the opera. So was Baranov. So there it was: you and Baranov were in the same venue. We both know there’s no such thing as coincidence in our profession, Sam. And then: confirmation. You brush-passed him a message in the foyer after the performance. Great tradecraft, Sam. The foyer was jammed and it was a very smooth bren16 indeed. But we knew what to look for and we saw it.” Howard smiled. “Bingo, Sam. Jackpot.”
Sam said nothing.
“That was enough for Putin. He ordered me to put Baranov under active surveillance. I knew at once you’d received POA.” Howard turned toward Rand Arthur. “That stands for provisional operational approval, Senator—and you’d recruited Baranov. So I took one of my best teams and assigned them to him, twenty-four-seven. Eighty people per shift, Sam. Just think of the man-hours. I discovered all your signal sites and letterboxes. Your rendezvous sites, too. Arbatskaya lamppost—that was a Morse code signal site, as I recall. Your Prospekt Mira metro pickup spot. The mailbox at the Church of the Trinity in Serebryaniki. Even the hollowed-out tree just north of the police station in Red Army Park.”
Sam’s eyes never wavered. But he drew a small measure of grim satisfaction in the fact that Ed’s four score gumshoes had screwed up—if just a little. Red Army Park had never been one of Pavel Baranov’s dead drops. The park was right next to a cluster of army staff offices. The chance of being compromised by Russian counterintelligence was too great. And even if Russian CI hadn’t been active in the area, Sam would not have used that portion of the park as a dead-drop location because it was close to a vizir site and police station.
Maybe Red Army Park had been one of Howard’s dead-drop sites. Sam took appropriate note.
Howard appeared not to notice his gaffe. “I even knew about your car at the Moskvich factory,” he continued eagerly. “You never discovered the microphone, did you?” Howard cracked a smile at the flicker in Sam’s eyes. “So, we called the general in for a little tête-à-tête and I gave him a choice. I told him, ‘Work for us, Pavel Dmitriyvich, and perhaps you’ll escape the gulag. If not—’ “ Howard looked at Sam, his moist eyes absolutely cold. “Well, Sam, you know the alternatives as well as he did.”
Sam knew the alternatives all too well. “You murdered him.”
“No,” Howard objected. “No way. I didn’t have him killed. Why would I? I was never told they were planning anything like that. Matter of fact, Sam, I was devastated when they executed Baranov, because I was about to use him to cause you—and Langley—a great deal of discomfort.”
“You said ‘they.’ Who had Baranov killed, Ed? Was it an American?”
The defector smiled. “Ah, yes. You started looking for Russian moles the minute you got back from Moscow, didn’t you, Sam? It was quite devastating to your career, one hears.”
“To hell with my career. Who had Baranov killed?”
“Your career did indeed go to hell, Sam.” Howard shrugged Sam off with a spiteful smile and shifted his gaze. “Miss Vacario, I’d like to settle a few particular arrangements about my future before I get any more specific with your interrogator here.”
That was when Sam realized he’d lost control. He wasn’t doing any better than a frigging Romanoff reports officer. It was Howard who’d just determined the entire tempo of the exchange. Dammit, he had to shake things up. Provoke. Goad. Incite. Sam gazed across the room at the defector’s smug face.
Then he slapped his big palm on the leather-inlaid surface of the desk like an explosion. “You’re crazy—Senator, Miss Vacano. Both of you.” When they looked at him, wide-eyed, he continued. “What the hell is going on here?” He focused on Virginia Vacano. “You—you’re an attorney—an officer of the court. Hell, you’re the SSCI minority counsel. So you know exactly what you have to do.” Sam swiveled toward the senator and explained himself. “She gets on the phone and she calls the FBI. And then the two of you turn this … thing over to them. Let him make his crazy accusations—and let the FBI deal with it. Whatever happens, happens. But the bottom line is, he’s a traitor, a defector. He works for Moscow Center. Brave people died because of his treachery—including one of my agents. He deserves whatever he gets.”
Howard said, quite coolly, “The senator knows what you suggest is impossible. It wasn’t part of the agreement.”
Jeezus H. Kee-rist. Had Rand had already cut a deal with the defector? Sam’s voice took on an edge. “Senator?”
Now it was Rand Arthur’s turn to release chaff. The senator ignored Sam’s question. Instead, he crossed his arms defensively and blurted, “He showed up unannounced.”
“Unannounced.”
Rand Arthur continued. “Two days ago. Just after midnight. He rang the front doorbell. I came down and answered it. He stood there and said, ‘Senator, I’m Edward Lee Howard and I want to come home.’ ”
“Just like that. And you agreed not to turn him in.”
“I agreed to listen to what he had to say,” Rand Arthur protested. “I told him that if he was honest with me, I’d do my best to help him.”
“So, has he been honest, Senator?”
“Motive be damned, he has a lot to offer, Sam.” The senator gave Sam a guarded look. “Besides,” he continued, “there are a lot of questions he can answer; a lot of old cases he can solve for us. But he has conditions …”
Motive be damned? Sam was shaken. But the senator continued undeterred. “One of them was seeing you. This morning, out of the
blue, he demanded to see you.” The senator looked over at Howard. “Right, Ed? You told me you wouldn’t say another word until you’d had a chance to meet with Sam Waterman. Only Sam would do.”
Sam looked over toward the defector. Edward Lee Howard’s opaque expression never changed. He remained silent.
Rand Arthur picked up the slack. “I had no idea where you were these days. Luckily, Michael O’Neill was here. He knew where to look.” The senator paused. “I guess Ed thought you’d be the best person to take his information and help us put it to good use.”
That’s when the warning light went on in Sam’s brain. “Good use.”
“About the president. About Russia’s network of agents. Their penetration plans. The other materials he brought.”
“He hasn’t produced a shred of evidence so far, Senator.”
“But he will,” Rand Arthur insisted. “Now that you’re here. You’ll see, Sam.”
“He says he is willing to hand everything over to us,” Virginia Vacario explained.
The senator cleared his throat. “Not to us, Ginny.” The senator tapped his chest. “To me. He said once he’d met with Sam he’d be willing to hand everything over to me.”
That was when Sam realized how bad the situation actually was. Edward Lee Howard had snagged them both. He’d tagged their vulnerabilities and exploited their egos and was playing them like game fish. The damn senator and his chief counsel, and they were both his. Couldn’t they see what the hell was going on here? They were bloody well being recruited.
“Senator, I’d like to talk to you outside.”
Rand Arthur blinked. “Why?”
“Because I’d like to talk to you—alone.”
Rand Arthur’s eyes flicked in Virginia Vacario’s direction. Sam couldn’t see her reaction without making a clumsy move.
He didn’t have to. The senator filled the blank in for him. “If you’d like to tell me anything, Sam, I think it preferable that you do so in front of my counsel.”
Been there, done that. “Whatever you say, Senator.” He pushed out from behind the desk, crossed the big room, and stood by the heavy wooden door. Virginia Vacano followed him, her pen clutched like a dagger, the legal pad shielding her bosom.
The senator dropped his hand onto Ed Howard’s shoulder. “This foolishness won’t take more than a few minutes,” he said. “Can I bring you a drink?”
“Thank you, no, Senator.” Howard shook his head. “I’ll be just fine.”
Rand Arthur joined Sam and the attorney at the door. He stood so as to block Sam’s view as he punched the combination into the cipher lock. When he heard the soft click, he opened the door and stood aside so that Vacario could lead the way. Then Sam walked through the doorway and watched as the senator pulled the door shut, double-checking to make sure it couldn’t be opened. Then both men followed the staccato castanets of the lawyer’s heels on the intricately patterned wood floor.
THE CHIEF COUNSEL led them down the hall and then turned left into a narrow passageway, past a small wet bar and into a pantry, which in turn led to a huge kitchen, floored in rustic Spanish tile. She dropped her legal pad on a granite-covered island, unsheathed the pen, and turned toward Sam. “What was so important?” she asked impatiently.
“He’s playing with you. Can’t you see it?”
“Of course I see it,” she said, irritation evident in her tone. “But so what? What’s so bad about letting him think he’s running things?”
“Because that puts him in control,” Sam said. “It means he decides what happens—not you.” He paused. “Senator, I really do advise strongly that you bring the FBI into this.”
“I’m surprised that you of all people would suggest that course of action,” Rand Arthur said.
“His allegations—” Sam began.
Rand Arthur cut him off. “Things are a lot more complicated than they may appear at first glance, Sam.”
Virginia Vacario said: “The FBI’s still recovering from Hanssen. The so-called counterintelligence czar is a figurehead. They’ve moved ninety percent of the agents working CI into counterterrorism.”
“Besides,” Rand Arthur said, “the FBI is just too porous these days.” The senator turned toward his chief counsel. “The committee has had major problems with leaks coming from the Bureau, hasn’t it, Ginny? And the Department of Justice is just as bad.” Rand Arthur gave Sam a worried look. “Any hint of this in the news media before we can substantiate Howard’s assertions would be ruinous.”
Sam was equally adamant. “He’s a traitor, Senator. Turn him over to the proper authorities and let nature take its course.”
Rand Arthur took on a resolute tone. “You’re making an open-and-shut case out of this, Sam. You know that in intelligence, most things are shades of gray.”
Sam said nothing. Wait them out. Make them explain themselves.
“There’s a lot at stake,” the senator finally blurted.
Sam decided that Ed Howard had obviously hooked these two up, and they were going to do whatever they were going to do no matter what he said. But all of his instinct and experience told him everything about the situation was wrong. Something was terribly hinky here.
Like Howard, Rand Arthur was holding something back. He was omitting some essential element of information, and he was trying to draw Sam’s attention away from noticing it. What does Rand Arthur really want? What’s the goal here?
And then, as if on cue, the senator answered it for him. “Time,” Rand Arthur said definitively. “Time is the single most critical factor we have to face, Sam.”
“Why, Senator?”
“Because you can’t look at Ed’s redefection in a vacuum, Sam. There are huge consequences to what’s taking place here in this house tonight. Huge political consequences. Huge national consequences. Huge global consequences.”
And that was when Sam understood exactly what Rand Arthur wanted from him—and what he wanted from Ed Howard, too. Rand Arthur wanted what a lot of politicians want: he wanted to be president.
But Rand Arthur possessed something no other politician had. He controlled Edward Howard’s information. And to achieve his political objective, he was about to use Howard’s allegations to launch a covert action the likes of which had never before been attempted anywhere.
Not an hour earlier, Rand Arthur had admitted he’d sacrificed Sam’s scalp in order to play a political chess game merely to improve his position on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Now Sam understood that Rand Arthur wanted very, very much to become president of the United States. How many scalps was he willing to sacrifice to get there?
Because Ed Howard’s revelations—especially if they were true but even if they weren’t—were political dynamite of a potency heretofore unknown in American politics. There were huge potential pitfalls ahead for the administration. The inevitable war in Iraq could go badly—or worse, turn into a guerrilla war and drag on for years. Al-Qa’ida could reconstitute itself and strike the U.S. Iran’s nuclear program could become operational. So could North Korea’s. The Middle East could erupt into a new regional war.
It wasn’t only the Democrats waiting for George W. Bush to slip up either. A Republican challenger was a long shot now, with the president’s polls running 70 percent positive. But late in 2003, with the economy still dragging, unemployment hovering around 6 percent, and the world stage in turmoil, anything might be possible. Rand Arthur was neither the brightest of men nor was he particularly blessed with what the first President Bush had called “the vision thing.” But he was charismatic, charming, and, above all, media-wise. He gave great quote—and he gave a lot of it. His presence was ubiquitous both in print and on the Sunday-morning talk shows. And with reason: Rand had spent twelve years in the House and fourteen in the Senate assiduously cultivating Washington’s media movers and shakers. And so, if the force of Rand Arthur’s political explosion was properly controlled, accurately tamped, and above all, perfectly timed, the kinetic
force generated by its energy might just propel Rand into the White House in slightly over two years—or position him nicely for 2008.
CHAPTER 9
HINGS WERE MOVING way too fast. And fast was dangerous. It wasn’t that intelligence gathering didn’t demand initiative, ingenuity, and resourcefulness. Nor did a spy’s tradecraft exclude quick, decisive, decision making. And certainly, the case officer’s holy trinity of spot, assess, and recruit required both intuitive and spontaneous behavior. But Sam also understood from experience that risk taking, which was the essence of what recruiting and running agents was all about, wasn’t the same as being either impetuous, or reckless.
Rand Arthur was propelling him straight toward both. Indeed, one of the first questions Sam asked himself, as he stood in the kitchen under Rand Arthur’s intense gaze, was whether the chairman’s behavior simply reflected characteristic, senatorial impatience, or was there a deeper, and potentially more sinister political purpose at play here, with Sam recast as the sacrificial lamb.
Now, a Romanoff profiler might conclude from a quick analysis of this inner turmoil that Sam was one of those cynical conspiratorialists who look at “two plus two” and know in their hearts that “four” is simply a cover-up to keep the hoi polloi from discovering the presence of the second gunman on the grassy knoll. But they’d be wrong. His motivation was pretty straightforward: Sam Waterman had been taught from the very start of his career never to accept anything as it appeared to be. The term “face value” appeared nowhere in his operational lexicon.