Murder in the CIA

by Margaret Truman

  Collette: Please see me as soon as you come in. Joe.

  The note was taped to the telephone in her office on the second floor of the embassy. She got a cup of coffee and walked down the hall to Breslin’s office. “Come in,” he said. “Close the door.”

  He took a sip of his coffee which, Cahill knew, contained a healthy shot of akvavit, compliments of a buddy in the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen who always included a bottle in his diplomatic pouch. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Feel like a walk?”

  “Sure.” He wasn’t suggesting it because he needed exercise. What he had to say was important and private, and Breslin was a notorious paranoiac when it came to holding such conversations inside the embassy.

  They went down a broad staircase with worn red carpeting, through a door tripped electronically by a young woman at the front desk, past a Hungarian Embassy employee who was running a metal detector over a visitor, and out into bright sunshine that bathed Szabadság tėr and Liberation Square.

  A group of schoolchildren gathered at the base of a huge memorial obelisk dedicated to Soviet soldiers who’d liberated the city. The streets were bustling with people on their way to work, or heading for Váci utca and its parallel shopping boulevard from which all vehicles were banned. “Come on,” Breslin said, “let’s go down to Parliament.”

  They walked along the Danube’s shoreline until they reached the domed, neo-Gothic Parliament building with its eighty-eight statues depicting Hungarian monarchs, commanders, and famous warriors. Breslin looked up at it and smiled. “I would have liked being around here when they really did have a Parliament,” he said. Since the Soviets took over, the Parliament continued to function, but in name only. The real decisions were made in an ugly, rectangular building farther up the river where the MSZMP—the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party—sat.

  Cahill watched boat traffic on the Danube as she asked, “What do you want to tell me?”

  Breslin pulled his pipe from his jacket, tamped tobacco into its bowl, and put a wooden match to it. “I don’t think you’ll have to ask for time off to chase down what happened to your friend Barrie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Based upon what Stan told me this morning, you’re going to be asked to do it officially.” Stanley Podgorsky was chief-of-station for the CIA unit operating out of the embassy. Of two hundred Americans assigned there, approximately half were CIA people reporting to him.

  “Why me?” Cahill asked. “I’m not a trained investigator.”

  “Why not? How many Company investigators have you known who were trained?” It caused her to smile. “You know how it works, Collette, somebody knows somebody who’s been compromised and they get the assignment, instant investigator. I think that’s you this time around.”

  “Because I knew Barrie?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And it wasn’t a heart attack?”

  “Not from what I hear.”

  They approached a construction crew that was using jack-hammers to tear out an old dock. When they were close enough so that even sophisticated, long-range microphones would fail to distinguish their words from the din, Breslin said, “She was carrying, Collette, and evidently it was important.”

  “And it’s gone?”

  “Right.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Sure. It was either us or them. If it was them, they have the material and we’re in a panic. If it was us, one of our people has what she had in her briefcase and maybe is looking to sell it to the other side.” He drew on his pipe and said, “Or …”

  “Or wanted what she had for other reasons, personal maybe, incriminating, something like that.”

  “Yes, something like that.”

  She squinted against the sun that popped out from a fast-moving cloud and said, “Joe, we’re down here for more than just a preliminary warning to me that Stan might ask me to look into Barrie’s death. He told you to feel me out, didn’t he?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Really? No hesitation?”

  “None. I wanted to do it on my own time anyway. This way I don’t blow what leave I have coming to me.”

  “That’s pragmatic.”

  “That’s working for the Pickle Factory too long. Do I go back and tell him, or do you?”

  “You. I have nothing to do with this. One final bit of advice, Collette. Stan and the desk people back at Langley really don’t give a damn how Barrie died. As far as they’re concerned, she had a heart attack. I mean, they know she didn’t but she doesn’t count. The briefcase does.”

  “What was in it? Who was it from?”

  “Maybe Stan will tell you, but I doubt it. Need-to-know, you know.”

  “If I’m trying to find out who ended up with it, I’ll need to know.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. That’s up to Stan and Langley. Let them lay out the rules and you stay within them.” He looked over half-glasses to reinforce his point.

  “I will, and thanks, Joe. I’ll go see Stan right now.”

  Podgorsky occupied an office that had a sign on the door that read TYPEWRITER REPAIR. Many CIA offices within the embassy had such signs which, the thinking went, would discourage casual visitors. They usually did.

  He sat behind a battered desk with a row of burn marks from too many cigars perched on the edge. Stanley was short and stocky, with a full head of gray hair of which he was inordinately proud. Cahill liked him, had from the first day she arrived in Budapest. He was shrewd and tough but had a sentimental streak that extended to everyone working for him.

  “You talked to Joe?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Make sense to you?”

  “I guess so. We were close. I was supposed to meet her flight.”

  He nodded and grunted, rolled his fingertips on the desk. “Were you meeting her for us?”

  “No, strictly personal. I didn’t know whether she was carrying or not.”

  “She ever talk to you about what she was doing?”

  “A little.”

  “Nothing about this trip.”

  “Nothing. She never got specific about any trip she took here. All she ever got into was her meetings with her agency clients like Zoltán Réti.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “I know. He called me last night from London and left a message on my machine.”

  “You find it strange he isn’t here?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “She was supposed to meet with him and a Party big shot about clearing Réti to get the money his books are making in the West.”

  “How much was that going to cost?”

  Podgorsky laughed. “Whatever the papakha needed to buy one of those condos up on the hill, or to get himself a fancy new car quick.”

  “Palms are all the same.”

  “So’s the grease and the way it goes on.” His face became grim. “We lost a lot, Collette.”

  “What she was carrying was that important?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was it?”

  “Need-to-know.”

  “I need to know if I’m going to be digging into what led up to her death.”

  He shook his head. “Not now, Collette. The assignment is clear-cut, no ambiguities. You go home on leave and touch base with everybody in her life. You’re grieving, can’t believe your good friend is dead. You find out what you can and report it to a case officer at Langley.”

  “How cynical. I really do care what happened to my friend.”

  “I’m sure you do. Look, you don’t have to do this. It’s not in your area, but I’d suggest you think six times before turning it down. Like I said, the stakes are big here.”

  “Banana Quick?”

  He nodded.

  “Am I really taking leave?”

  “It’ll be on the books that way in case somebody wants to snoop. We’ll make it up to you later. That’s a promise fro
m me.”

  “When do you want me to start?”

  “Leave in the morning.”

  “I can’t. You know I have a meet set up with Horgász.”

  “That’s right. When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  Podgorsky thought for a moment before saying, “It’s important?”

  “I haven’t seen him for six weeks. He left word at one of the drops that he had something. It’s been set, can’t be changed.”

  “Then do it, leave the next morning.”

  “All right. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Go easy. Frankly, I tried to veto having you assigned to this. Too close. Good friends usually get in the way. Try to forget who she was and concentrate on business. A briefcase. That’s all anybody cares about.”

  She stood and said, “I really do hate this place, Stan.”

  “Gay ol’ Budapest?” He laughed loudly.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Sure I do. Everything set for Horgász?”

  “I think so. We’re using the new safehouse.”

  “I still don’t like that place. I should have stuck to my guns and killed it when it was suggested. Too close to too many other things.”

  “I’m comfortable with it.”

  “That’s good. You’re a trouper, Collette.”

  “I’m an employee. You said I’ll be on leave, which means no official status. That makes it tough.”

  “No it doesn’t. The only thing having status would give you is access to our people. You don’t need them. They don’t have any answers. They’re looking for answers.”

  “I want to retrace Barrie’s steps. I’ll go to London first.”

  He shrugged.

  “I want to talk to the doctors who did the autopsy.”

  “Nothing to be gained there, Collette. They used cleared personnel.”

  “British SIS?”

  “Probably.”

  “How was she killed, Stan?”

  “Beats me. Maybe prussic acid if it was the Soviets.”

  “We use it, too, don’t we?”

  He ignored the question by going through a slow, elaborate ritual of clipping, wetting, and lighting a cigar. “Forget the British doctors, Collette,” he said through a cloud of blue smoke.

  “I still want to go to London first.”

  “Nice this time of year. Not many tourists.”

  She opened the door, turned, and asked, “How’s the typewriter repair business?”

  “Slow. They make ’em too good these days. Take care, and keep in touch.”

  She spent the remainder of the day, much of the night, and all of the next day preparing for her meet with a man, code name Horgász, Hungarian for “Fisherman.” He represented Collette Cahill’s coup since being in Budapest. Horgász, whose real name was Árpád Hegedüs, was a high-ranking psychologist within the KGB’s Hungarian intelligence arm.

  Cahill had met Árpád Hegedüs the first week she was in Budapest at a reception for a group of psychologists and psychiatrists who’d been invited to present papers to a Hungarian scientific conference. Three Americans were among the invited, including Dr. Jason Tolker. Cahill’s dislike for Tolker was instantaneous, although she hadn’t thought much about it until Barrie Mayer confided in her that he was the one who’d recruited her into the part-time role of CIA courier. “I didn’t like him,” Cahill had told her friend, to which Mayer replied, “You’re not supposed to like your shrink.” Mayer had been his patient for a year before hooking up with Central Intelligence.

  Árpád Hegedüs was a nervous little man, forty-six years old, who wore shirt collars that were too tight and wrinkled suits that were too large. He was married and had two children. Most of his training in psychology had been gained at the Neurological and Psychiatric Clinic on Balassa utca, near the Petöfi Bridge linking the Pest and Buda sides of the Grand Boulevard. He’d come to the attention of Soviet authorities after he’d developed and instituted a series of psychological tests for workers in sensitive jobs that were designed to flag personality traits that could lead to dissatisfaction, and perhaps even disloyalty. He was taken to Moscow, where he spent a year at VASA, the Soviet military intelligence school that constitutes a special department of the prestigious Military Diplomatic Academy. His intellect shone there and he was brought into the Sovietskaya Kolonia, the KGB’s arm responsible for policing the loyalty of the Soviet’s colonies abroad, in this case its Hungarian contingent. That was the job he held when Cahill met him at the reception, although his official position was with the teaching staff of his Hungarian alma mater.

  Cahill bumped into him a few more times over the ensuing months. One night, as she ate dinner alone in Vigadó, a downtown brasserie on Vigadó Square, he approached the table and asked if he might join her. They had a pleasant conversation. He spoke good English, loved opera and American jazz, and asked a lot of questions about life in the United States.

  Cahill didn’t attach any significance to the chance meeting. It was two weeks later that the reason for his approach became obvious.

  It was a Saturday morning. She’d gone for a run and ended up at the former Royal Palace on Castle Hill. The palace had been completely destroyed during World War II. Now the restoration was almost completed and the baroque palace had been transformed into a vast museum and cultural complex, including the Hungarian National Gallery.

  Cahill often browsed in the museum. It had become, for her, a peaceful refuge.

  She was standing in front of a huge medieval ecclesiastical painting when a man came up behind her. “Miss Cahill,” he said softly.

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Hegedüs. Nice to see you again.”

  “You like the paintings?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  He stood next to her and gazed up at the art work. “I would like to speak with you,” he said.

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  “Not now.” He looked around the gallery before saying so softly she almost missed it, “Tomorrow night at eleven, at the St. Mary Magdalene Church in Kapisztrán tėr.”

  Cahill stared at him.

  “In the back, behind the tower. At eleven. I will wait only five minutes. Thank you. Goodbye.” Cahill watched him cross the large room, his head swiveling to take in the faces he passed, his short, squat body lumbering from side to side.

  She immediately returned to her apartment, showered, changed clothes, and went to Stan Podgorsky’s apartment.

  “Hi, Lil,” Cahill said to his wife when she answered the door. “Sorry to barge in but …”

  “Just a typical Hungarian Saturday at home,” she said. “I’m baking cookies and Stan’s reading a clandestine issue of Playboy. Like I said, just your run-of-the mill Hungarian weekend.”

  “I have to talk to you,” Cahill told him in the crowded little living room. “I’ve just had something happen that could be important.”

  They took a walk and she told him what had transpired in the museum.

  “What do you know about him?” he asked.

  “Not much, just that he’s a psychologist at the hospital and …”

  “He’s also KGB,” Podgorsky said.

  “You know that for certain?”

  “I sure do. Not only is he KGB, he’s attached to the SK, the group that keeps tabs on every Russian here. If he’s making an overture to us, Collette, he could be playing games—or he could be damn valuable. No, Christ, that’s an understatement. He could be gold, pure gold.”

  “I wonder why he sought me out,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter. He liked the way you looked, sensed someone he could trust. Who knows? What matters is that we follow up on it and not do anything to scare him off, on the long shot that he might be turned—or has turned.” He looked at his watch, said, “Look, go on home and pack a small overnight bag. I’ll meet you at the embassy in two hours, after I get hold of some others we need on this. Take a circle route to the embassy. Make sure nobody’s tailing you. Anybody look inter
ested in your conversation with him at the museum?”

  “I really wasn’t looking for anyone, but he sure was. He was a wreck.”

  “Good. And for good reason. Okay, two hours, and be ready for a marathon.”

  The next thirty-six hours were intense and exhausting. By the time Cahill headed for the square of St. John Capistrano, she’d had a complete briefing on Árpád Hegedüs provided by the station’s counterintelligence branch, whose job it was to create biographical files on everyone in Budapest working for the other side.

  A gray Russian four-door Zim with two agents was assigned to follow her to the street-meet with Hegedüs. The rules that had been laid down for her were simple and inviolate.

  She was to accept nothing from him, not a scrap of paper, not a matchbook, nothing, to avoid being caught in the standard espionage trap of being handed a document from the other side, then immediately put under arrest for spying.

  If anything seemed amiss (“Anything!” Podgorsky had stressed), she was to terminate the meeting and walk to a corner two blocks away where the car would pick her up. The same rule applied if he wasn’t alone.

  The small Charter Arms .38-caliber special revolver she carried in her raincoat pocket was to remain there unless absolutely necessary for her physical protection. If that need arose, the two agents in the Zim would back her up with M-3 submachine guns with silencers.

  She was to commit to nothing to Hegedüs. He’d called the meet, and it was her role to listen to what he had to say. If he indicated he wished to become a double agent, she was to set another meeting at a safehouse that was about to be discarded. No sense exposing an ongoing location to him until you were sure he was legit.

  Cahill lingered in front of a small café down the street from the Gothic church. She was grateful for its presence. Her heart was beating and she drew deep breaths to calm down. Her watch read 10:50. He said he’d wait only five minutes. She couldn’t be late.

  The gray Zim passed, the agents looking straight ahead but taking her in with their peripheral vision. She walked away from the café and approached the church, still in ruins except for the meticulously restored tower. She had a silly thought—she wished there were fog to shroud the scene and to give it more the atmosphere of spy-meeting-spy. There wasn’t; it was a pristine night in Budapest. The moon was nearly full and cast a bright floodlight over the tiny streets and tall church.