Barlow pointed at Delchamps, and said, "You're on it, Edgar."
"Okay, then. Now what?" Leverette said. "We've located the Congo-X in Venezuela. What do we do about it?"
"We start to prove-or disprove-the scenario," Castillo said. "First step in that will be when we get from Aloysius the intel he's going to get from the DCI."
"You don't know that's who's giving him the intel he's promised to send, my darling," Svet said.
Castillo, at the last split second, kept himself from saying something loving and kind-for example, What part of "Don't offer a goddamn opinion unless I ask for it" didn't you understand, my precious?
Instead, he said: "Who else could it be?"
Svetlana replied, "The value of the intel we get from Casey is only as reliable as the source, and we don't know it's coming from the CIA, do we? So I suggest we take what Casey sends us with a grain of salt."
"She got you, Ace," Delchamps said. "Listen to your consigliere."
"Yeah, she did," Castillo admitted. "Okay, Sweaty: Give us your take on the 'Come home, all is forgiven' letter from Cousin Vladlen."
"You haven't figured that out? It is meant to let your government off the hook, my darling. It'll come out that we've returned to Russia-"
Castillo interrupted, "What do you mean, 'we've returned to Russia'?"
"You asked me a question: Let me finish answering it," Svetlana said. "Maybe I should have said if we return to Russia and it comes out-and it would-then your government couldn't be accused of cruelly and heartlessly sending us home to the prison on Lubyanka Square. Your press will get that letter. It says 'All is forgiven.' Your government can then say all they did when they loaded us aboard an Aeroflot airplane was help us go home to our loving family."
"Score another one for Sweaty," Delchamps said.
"The U.S. government is not going to put you on an Aeroflot plane," Castillo said.
"You better hope, Ace," Delchamps said.
"Over my dead body," Castillo said.
"Thank you, my darling," Svetlana said. "I will pray that it doesn't come to that."
"Me, too," Tom Barlow said. "May I offer a suggestion, Charley?"
"Sure."
"Before we get whatever Casey is going to send us, why don't we all, independently, try to find fault with our scenario?"
Castillo nodded. "Sure. Good idea."
"And while we're all doing that, independently come up with a scenario on how to deal with this?"
"Another good idea," Castillo said.
"Are we going to try to grab this stuff in Venezuela?" Lorimer asked.
"What I would like to do is grab that Tupolev Tu-934A in Venezuela," Torine said.
Everyone was quiet for a long moment.
Then Pevsner said: "I'll check, but I think everybody's rooms should be ready by now. Shall we meet here in, say, an hour and have another of Leverette's cocktails and then dinner?" [ONE] Claudio's Shell Super Service Station State Highways 203 and 304 Centreville, Maryland 0730 7 February 2007 There was nothing unusual about the GMC Yukon XL that turned off State Highway 304 into the gas station. Indeed, there were two near twins-three, if one wished to count a Chevrolet Suburban-already at the pump islands.
The driver of the arriving Yukon pulled up beside one of the pumps, got out, and fed the pump a credit card. Other doors opened and three men-all dressed in plaid woolen jackets-got out and walked quickly toward the men's room, suggesting to a casual witness that it had been a long time between pit stops.
A Chrysler Grand Caravan turned off State Highway 203 and drove right up to the men's room door. The van's sliding door opened and three men-also in plaid woolen jackets and also apparently feeling the urgent call of nature-hurried into the restroom.
A minute or so later, the first of the men came out of the restroom, and got into either the Yukon or the Grand Caravan. In two minutes everybody was out of the men's room. The Caravan backed up and stopped at a pump. The Yukon driver walked quickly to the men's room.
By the time he came out, the driver of the Caravan had topped off his tank and returned to the wheel. By the time the Yukon driver got behind his wheel, the Caravan was out of the station. Ninety seconds later, so was the Yukon.
If anyone had been watching it was unlikely that they would have noticed that one of the men who had gone to the restroom from the Yukon had gotten into the Grand Caravan when he came out and that one of the Caravan passengers had gone to the Yukon when he came out of the men's room. The man in the front passenger seat of the Grand Caravan turned and offered the man who had just gotten in a silver flask.
"What is it they say about 'beware of Russians passing the bottle'?" A. Franklin Lammelle, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, asked. "And it's a little early for vodka, even for me."
"It's not vodka, Frank. It's Remy Martin," Cultural Counselor Sergei Murov of the Washington embassy of the Russian Federation replied.
"In that case, Sergei, I will have a little taste," Lammelle said, and reached for the flask. He held it up in a toast, and said, "Here's to Winston Churchill, who always began his day with a taste of fine cognac."
Both men were stocky, in their midforties, fair-skinned, and wore small, rimless spectacles. Murov had a little more remaining hair than Lammelle. They could have been cousins.
Murov was the SVR's Washington rezident. Lammelle knew this, and Murov knew that Lammelle had known that since the Russians had proposed Murov to be their embassy's cultural counselor. Ten minutes later, the convoy turned onto Piney Point Farm Lane. A quarter of a mile down the lane, ten-foot-high chainlink fences became visible behind the vegetation on both sides of the road. On the fencing, at fifty-foot intervals, there were signs: PRIVATE PROPERTY! TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED!
Finally, the Caravan came to the first of two chainlink fence gates across the road. Outside the outer gate there was a black Ford sedan with MARYLAND STATE POLICE lettered on the body. Two state troopers in two-tone brown uniforms sat in the front seats. When the Caravan came a stop, one got out of the passenger door and carefully examined the minivan, but made no attempt to do anything else. The three SUV's parked on either side of the lane.
The outer gate swung open, and a man in a police-type private security guard uniform inside the second gate motioned for the Caravan to advance. When the van had done so, the outer gate closed behind it. The security guard came from behind the second gate, walked to the Caravan, and opened the sliding door.
When he was satisfied that there was no one in the vehicle determined to trespass on what-like the Russian embassy itself-was legally as much the territory of the Russian Federation as was the Lubyanka Square headquarters of the KGB in downtown Moscow, he signaled for the interior gate to be opened. Frank Lammelle knew a great deal about what was known as the "Russian dacha on the Eastern Shore." Some of what he knew, he had known for as long as he had been in the CIA. Back in the bad old days when Russia had been the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, young Frank Lammelle of the Clandestine Service had thought it was ironic that the ambassador of the USSR spent his weekends in a house built by John J. Raskob, almost a caricature of a capitalist. Raskob had been simultaneously vice president of General Motors and E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company-which owned forty-three percent of GM-and had ordered the construction of the Empire State Building in New York City with the mandate to the architect that it be taller than the Chrysler Building.
Raskob's three-floor brick mansion had not been quite large enough to house him and his thirteen children, so he had built another one just about as large for them and his guests, who included such people as Walter Chrysler, Henry Ford, and Thomas Edison.
The Soviet government had bought both houses from Raskob's heirs in 1972 and later enlarged the estate by swapping land the Americans wanted in Moscow for land adjacent to the Maryland property.
The Russians then further improved the property by importing from Finland fourteen small "rental" houses for the use of embass
y employees.
Some of what Lammelle knew about the Russian dacha on the Eastern Shore he had learned more recently. At five-thirty that morning, he had met with J. Stanley Waters, the CIA's deputy director for operations, and several of his deputies in The Bubble at CIA headquarters in Langley. Only the people in The Bubble-plus of course DCI Jack Powell-knew that Lammelle had accepted Sergei Murov's invitation to go boating in Maryland.
The meeting had been called both to guess the reason Murov wanted to talk to Lammelle-probably it had something to do with Congo-X, but no one was sure-and to prepare Lammelle for it.
To that end, the latest-just taken-satellite photos of the compound were shown. "Photos" was probably a misnomer, as these were satellite motion pictures. The infrared and other sensors showed life in only four of the rental cottages, including the two known to house the Russians' communications center. The analysts agreed there was no significant change from the data taken over the past week.
The NSA at Fort Meade reported they had been unable to pull anything of interest from the ether-that is, any reference to Lammelle, Murov, or a meeting between the two-and that the level of traffic between Moscow, the dacha, the embassy in Washington, and the Russian Mission to the United Nations in New York City was normal. Nothing had been sent either in a code, or by any technical means the Russians erroneously believed had not been detected or cracked at Fort Meade.
The FBI liaison officer reported that the FBI agents tracking Murov had seen nothing out of the ordinary in his behavior, and that the FBI agents on-site-one of the two state troopers stationed around the clock at the gate was always an FBI special agent-had similarly seen nothing of special interest.
Lammelle had closed the meeting with a reminder that the visit had to be kept a secret. Secrecy was important because Senator Homer Johns (Democrat, New Hampshire), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who loved to be on TV and despised the CIA, would-should he learn of the meeting-love nothing better than to call DCI Powell to ask about the meeting, then quickly leak the secret to CNN and/or C. Harry Whelan, Jr., the syndicated columnist, who didn't like the CIA either. There were three Mercedes-Benz automobiles lined up in the circular drive before the three-story brick mansion: a CLS 550 sedan-the pilot car-then an elegant twin-turbo V12 CL600-obviously the ambassador's vehicle-and then another CLS 550-the chase car.
The precautions are necessary, Lammelle thought, not to protect the ambassador from the Americans, but from his fellow Russians.
Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov would be delighted to sacrifice a half-dozen of his associates if that was the price for taking out the ambassador.
"It looks as if the boss is about to go to work," Murov said. "Why don't we say hello?"
This is not a coincidence, Lammelle decided. The ambassador probably waited until the gate reported their arrival before he came out of the house.
Obviously, he wants me to know that he knows I'm here, and, as important, to know that he knows Murov invited me. "What a pleasure to see you, Mr. Lammelle," the ambassador said, offering his hand.
He was a ruddy-faced, somewhat chubby fifty-five-year-old.
"It's always a pleasure to see you, Mr. Ambassador," Lammelle said.
"Sergei tells me you're going boating," the ambassador said.
"That's not exactly true, Mr. Ambassador. Going out on the river in February may be sport for a Siberian, but for an American it's insanity."
The ambassador laughed.
"What I thought I would do, Mr. Ambassador, is look through a window in the hunting lodge and watch Sergei turn to ice."
"I'm not a Siberian, Frank. I was born and raised in Saint Petersburg," Murov said.
Which at the time was called Leningrad, wasn't it, Sergei?
"In that case, I suggest we both look out the windows of the hunting lodge at the frigid waters."
The ambassador laughed again, and laid his hand on Lammelle's arm.
"If I have to say this, the door here is always open to you."
"That's very gracious of you, Mr. Ambassador."
"Perhaps if you're still here when I get back, we can have a drink," the ambassador said, and then gestured for his chauffeur to open the door of the Mercedes.
"I don't think that's likely, but thank you, Mr. Ambassador."
"Give my best regards to the President and Mr. Powell when you see them, please."
"I'll be happy to do so, Mr. Ambassador."
And say "Hi!" to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin for me, please, Mr. Ambassador, when you get the chance. "I thought we'd have breakfast in the hunting lodge, rather than in the house, if that's all right with you, Frank," Murov said as they watched the ambassadorial convoy of three luxury cars roll away.
"Fine with me, Sergei," Lammelle said.
Murov waved him back into the Caravan for the short ride to the hunting lodge, which was a small outbuilding that had been converted into a party room. There was a table that could seat a dozen people. A small kitchen was hidden behind a half-wall on which was a mural of two old-time sailors-one Russian and the other American-smiling warmly at each other as they tapped foam-topped beer mugs with one another.
Lammelle thought: In the professional judgment of our best counterintelligence people, somewhere on that mural and on that oh-so-charmingly-rustic chandelier with the beer mugs overhead and God only knows where else are skillfully concealed motion picture camera lenses and state-of-the-Russian-art microphones. All recording for later analysis every syllable I utter and every movement and facial expression I make.
And as much as I would love to roll my eyes and grimace for the cameras before giving them the international signal for "Up yours, Ivan," I can't do that.
Doing so would violate the rules of proper spook deportment, and we can't have that!
Unless we play by the rules, we would never learn anything from one another. Murov waved Lammelle into one of the two places set at the table, and a cook-a burly Russian man-immediately produced coffee mugs and set a bottle of Remy Martin and two snifters on the table.
That's really a little insulting, Sergei, if you thought I was going to oblige you by getting sauced and then run my mouth.
Or it could simply be standard procedure: "Put the booze out. The worse that can happen is that the American won't touch it."
"I asked Cyril to make eggs Benedict," Murov said. "That all right with you, Frank?"
"Sounds fine," Lammelle said, "but looking the gift horse in the teeth, can we get on with this? I really have to get back to the office."
"Just as soon as he lays the eggs Benedict before us, I'll ask Cyril to leave us." "I hardly know where to begin," Murov said as he finished his breakfast.
The hell you don't.
Item two on your thoughtfully prepared agenda-item one being put out the Remy Martin-was to suggest you don't know what you're talking about and simply are going to have to wing it and thus be at my mercy.
"How about this?" Murov went on. "I think there are certain areas where cooperation between us would be mutually advantageous."
"Does that mean, Sergei, that I have something you want, and you hope that what you're going to offer me will be enough to convince me I should give it to you?"
Murov considered that a moment, then shrugged, smiled, and nodded.
"You can always see right through me, Frank, can't you?"
"Only when you want me to, Sergei. If you don't want me to…"
"I know how to neutralize Congo-X," Murov said.
Now, that's interesting!
Starting with: How does he know that we're calling it Congo-X?
"I didn't know you had assets in Fort Detrick. Now I'll have to tell the counterintelligence guy there to slit his wrists."
"I have people all over. Almost as many as you do, Frank."
"Did your assets tell you that we've already just about figured out how to neutralize Congo-X?"
"They told me Colonel Hamilton has had some preliminary success,"
Murov said.
I don't think there's an SVR agent inside Detrick.
What I think we have is some misguided noble soul, a tree-hugger-or a half-dozen of them-who is making his-or their-contribution to world peace and brotherhood among men by feeding anything they think is another proof of our innate evilness to the Russians, who are no longer godless Communists, and thus no longer a threat.
The proof of how good they are now is that when they reburied the tsar and his family in Moscow, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was there on his knees. Somehow that photograph of that born-again Christian made front-page news all over the world.
"Just for the sake of conversation, Sergei, what have I got that you want?"
"Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva."
"Since you have assets all over, Sergei, I'm really surprised you don't know that we don't have either of them, and never have had."
"But in a manner of speaking, Frank, if you have someone who has anything-a bottle of Remy Martin, for example-wouldn't it be fair to say you also have that bottle of cognac?"
"If you're suggesting I have someone who has your two defectors, I don't. And I think you know that, Sergei."
"What about Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Castillo? Doesn't he have Berezovsky and Alekseeva? And since that name has come up, he wants Colonel Castillo, too."
"Who 'he,' Sergei? Who 'wants Colonel Castillo, too'?"
Murov smiled, but now his eyes were cold.
"Frank, we never lie to one another," Murov said.
True. But we obfuscate as well as we know how-and we're both good at it-all the time.
"So far, that's been the case, Sergei," Lammelle said.
"That being the case, you're not going to deny that Berezovsky and Alekseeva left Vienna on Castillo's airplane, are you?"
"Several people I know have told me that, so I'm prepared to believe it. But I don't know it for a fact."
"Or that Castillo works for you?"
"It's my turn to ask a question. You didn't answer my last question: Who 'he' that wants Castillo?"
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