Given that Johnson was a freelancer, Vic received most of the internal credit for Watson’s demise. But the promotion was more a reward for thirty years of service, much of it spent successfully organizing and running operations in the Near East and Asia, particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also from time to time in Eastern Europe and Russia. Vic had previously had a zigzag career, sometimes taking two steps forward and one back, depending on whose star was in the ascendancy at the Agency. But he had survived and had now adapted to his new more demanding role in his usual understated, laconic manner.
“Get through the first year. Then you’ll be fine,” Johnson said. “Anyway, tell me what’s happening. If you’ve driven here to ask me to do a job, the answer is probably no right now.”
Although it had been several months since the last long overseas investigation Johnson had carried out, in Afghanistan, the effects of being in a couple of life-threatening situations had remained with him. During occasional days off at home in Portland, Maine, he had been recently ruminating once again on whether, as a single dad with two teenagers, he should be carrying out such work at all.
Vic averted his gaze. “Why don’t we go for a coffee?” he suggested. “It’s still chilly out here.”
Johnson sighed. “Did you hear what I said?” He scratched his chin.
“Yes, I did.”
Johnson glanced across the plaza, past the leafless winter trees, at the streams of traffic running two lanes in each direction up and down Massachusetts Avenue past the university buildings.
“Okay, a quick coffee. Then I’m going back to the airport. My kids are expecting me to take them for pizza tonight.”
Vic nodded. “Good.” He beckoned Johnson. “This way. My car’s out the back.”
Chapter Two
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Glen Echo, Maryland
Half an hour later, Johnson and Vic were sitting on a pair of wooden chairs nursing cappuccinos in the bar at the Irish Inn at Glen Echo, a stone’s throw from the east bank of the Potomac River—the Maryland side. A mile or so away, across the other side of the river in Virginia but hidden from view by a thick expanse of trees, lay the CIA’s offices at Langley.
The bar, with its heavy wooden furniture and gourmet menu, was in a low-slung sandstone building with a gray slate roof and a canopied outdoor area. Two flags hung on poles over the entrance—one American, the other Irish.
It had only a smattering of customers, allowing Johnson and Vic to choose a quiet indoor table away from others.
Johnson had been to the Irish Inn several times during his sixteen years in DC as a war crimes investigator with the Office of Special Investigations; it had been given a few makeovers over the years but remained fundamentally unchanged. It had always been one of Vic’s regular haunts when he needed a quiet chat with somebody without any danger of surveillance.
By this time, Johnson was braced for the sales pitch that he knew was coming.
But, as usual, Vic first asked about how Johnson’s kids, Carrie and Peter, were doing and then gave an update on his own two children, a boy and a girl, who were now in their twenties. Vic lived not too far away, in the DC neighborhood of Palisades.
After ten minutes of chitchat, Johnson glanced at his watch, then leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. “All right, Vic,” he said, “let’s cut the crap. I’ve only got forty minutes before I need to leave for the airport. What is it?”
Vic rubbed his graying temples. “Listen. Normally I wouldn’t bother you with this, but since I was promoted I’ve had more freedom to draw on certain external resources that I might not have had before.”
“Like I said, I’m not doing CIA work for you.”
“No. War crimes only, I know that,” Vic said. “But there’s an element of that in an operation we’re looking at. You could add some value to it. I think you’d be interested.”
“Add some value to it?” Johnson muttered. “Is it compulsory to use corporate speak now that you’re in the top job?”
“We’ve got someone incoming in a couple of weeks,” Vic said, ignoring Johnson’s jibe. “From the other side.”
A defector, then. Interesting. “Who? From China? They’re the big threat now, aren’t they?” Johnson asked. “Or Moscow?”
“Right second time. The Chinese are after our technology and industrial intelligence, true, they want to overtake us. But the Russians matter more politically—they’d still like to destroy us. The guy is SVR. It’s a joint operation with the Brits.”
The SVR was Russia’s foreign intelligence service. It operated in tandem with the Federal Security Service—the FSB—its domestic equivalent. Until 1991 both units were part of the KGB, which after the dissolution of the Soviet Union was split into two separate organizations.
“Why is he important?” Johnson asked. “What’s the background?”
Vic hesitated. Clearly, he was about to venture into classified territory, Johnson assumed. It hadn’t stopped him before—his friend had trusted him implicitly ever since he had saved Vic’s life in a shoot-out while the two of them were on a CIA cross-border operation from their Pakistan base into Afghanistan in 1988.
“It’s a bit sensitive,” Vic said.
“It always is.” Johnson fingered the small nick at the top of his right ear, a legacy of that shoot-out in Jalalabad, when he was clipped by a bullet from a KGB sniper while he and Vic were trying to escape back to Pakistan.
“It’s someone who’s got a lot of massively useful information. An SVR colonel. Some of it’s about current issues, but some is historic too, which is where you come in.”
“Why are you bringing him in? If this guy has good access in Moscow, why not leave him in place?”
“He’s been in place for a long time, actually,” Vic said, lowering his voice even further. “Been very useful to us and to MI6. They’ve been handling him with plenty of input from us. He notified his handler, Six’s head of station in Berlin, that he wanted to come across. We’re going to be heavily involved in the operation and the debrief.”
Johnson drummed his fingers lightly on the table. “Is he blown?”
“No. But he would be if he gives us what he’s got and stays. They would know exactly where the information came from. It would be a one-way ticket to Butyrka or Lefortovo.”
The basement “interview” rooms of Russia’s two most notorious prisons remained the usual destination for those who were caught betraying the Motherland, despite all the modernization that had taken place in some other respects across the country. The thugs in the SVR’s counterintelligence department, known as Line KR, would ensure that anyone caught spying for the enemy would pay a full price—quite probably the ultimate price.
“So, he’s got no choice?” Johnson asked.
“Correct.”
“Must be big, then?”
“It is. Or so he tells us. I mean, he’s given us only an outline. We’ll get the full juice when he’s safely over the line.” Vic leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee. “Believe me, I’d prefer to leave him where he is. He’s been good.”
“So what has he hinted at that’s prompted you to come here and talk to me?”
Vic drained his coffee and leaned forward again, his face just a couple of feet from Johnson’s. “The current stuff supposedly involves the identity of a mole—a highly placed one—in Western intelligence.”
“From which service?” Johnson asked.
“It’s either MI6 or—God forbid—the Agency,” he murmured. “If it proves to be the Agency, and it’s someone in my directorate, I could become the shortest-serving head of the DO in living memory. We’ve had serious leaks to Moscow, including in the past few weeks alone a lot of naval intelligence relating to US and NATO’s planned response to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea. There have been other leaks, all involving joint operations with the Brits, which makes it harder to trace the source.”
“And the defector somehow knows
who this mole is?” Johnson asked.
“Yes. So he says.” Vic sat back and folded his arms.
“And the historic material?” Johnson asked.
“It goes back to the ’80s. Cold War dirty tricks in Berlin.”
Johnson raised his eyebrows. “Stasi or KGB?”
The Stasi was the East German State Security Service during the postwar years when the country was split, responsible for both internal and foreign intelligence and security. It had a massive number of informants across the country, including a network of ordinary citizens who spied on their neighbors and even their own families.
“Apparently both services,” Vic said.
“Is that going to be of interest now?”
Vic pursed his lips. “I don’t know. It’s a long time ago. But . . .” He let his voice trail away.
“But what?”
“It’s difficult.” Vic hesitated and wiped away a small blob of cappuccino froth from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s personal, actually.”
“Come on, Vic.”
“All right. Do you recall the La Belle disco bombing? Berlin nightclub in the Friedenau area. About 229 people maimed for life or injured, mostly Germans, but many were Americans. Three people died.”
Johnson did recall it, at least the broad details. He had been a teenager in Portland, Maine, when in April 1986 a bomb planted by Libyan terrorists blew apart the La Belle disco. The media coverage in the States had been massive given that the club was a favorite of US soldiers serving in the divided city.
It had been one of the most symbolic terrorist attacks of the Cold War era in Europe and had come at a time when Johnson was starting to enjoy visiting discos at home. He recalled thinking how it would feel if a bomb had gone off at a similar club in Portland.
“Yes, I remember it. Of course I do. But what’s the connection that you think might be of interest to me? And why is it personal?”
“Like I said, I’ve hardly any details yet, but the word is that our man has some information of not just who was behind the bombing but some other deeper stuff, apparently.”
“Intriguing. Going higher up the chain of command, you mean? Something criminal that could lead to prosecutions?”
Vic inclined his head. “Can’t say exactly. But the guy was working for the KGB in East Berlin at that time and knew the key players both on the Soviet side and on the Stasi side, given that the Stasi were effectively just KGB lackeys.”
“But I thought some Libyans were convicted? Gaddafi’s crew.” Johnson remembered reading reports of the trial that had taken place years later. The Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, was seen as having ordered the attack for which five people were eventually imprisoned in 2001. As part of an anti-American, anti-Western capitalist agenda, Gaddafi also ordered the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, a jumbo jet that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 270 people. Two decades later, Libya paid compensation to victims for these and other atrocities.
“Yes, they were. But it seems there was more to it than that.” Vic stroked his chin. “Exactly what, we will find out, no doubt. But I thought it might conceivably be something you would find interesting. My team and the Brits, the MI6 lot, will be entirely focused on the current issue I’ve described—the mole—whereas this other historical material, the Cold War criminal element, might be right up your alley. I would really like you to have a go at it.”
Johnson screwed up his eyes. “I don’t think so, Vic. I’m sure there must be someone in your team who could handle this alongside whatever other material the guy is going to give you. It’s not a war crime, is it?”
“I would say it definitely is. A Cold War crime.”
A group of middle-aged men in suits, laughing and joking among themselves, walked into the bar and began a raucous discussion about which of the beers available on tap they should opt for. They had probably finished work early and stopped in for refreshments en route home.
Johnson turned his attention back to Vic. “Look, where is this guy going to be debriefed?”
“Berlin, strangely enough. He’ll be coming in on a train from Prague, where he’s meant to be visiting one of his agents.”
Johnson shook his head. Berlin: his old stomping ground during the early 1980s when he spent four years at the Freie Universität studying for a PhD. He’d loved the place and the sinister, mysterious atmosphere that encompassed it at the height of the Cold War.
“You want me to travel to Berlin for this when you’ve got any number of guys at the CIA station there on the doorstep who could handle it?” Johnson asked.
Vic nodded.
“But why?”
Vic looked down at the floor and then back up at Johnson. “Like I said, it’s personal.”
“How?”
“There were seventy-nine American soldiers injured in La Belle, and two of the three who died were American. One of the injured lost his right eye and eighty percent of the vision in his left eye, as well as his hearing. A few years later he committed suicide because of severe depression brought on by the long-term effects of the post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered from because of his injuries.”
“Go on,” Johnson said. He was intrigued now, not least because Vic was visibly struggling to get his words out. “Who was that?”
Vic turned his head and gazed out the window. “My brother.”
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Portland, Maine
“What’s your definition of a traitor then, Dad?” Carrie asked.
Johnson glanced at his daughter, who had a slight grin on her face. She was always asking provocative questions. Now in eleventh grade at high school, it was no wonder she was aiming to be a journalist after college.
“It depends on your point of view,” Johnson said. “If you are sitting in Moscow and your man deserts to the US, you would call him a traitor. We might call him a defector. And vice versa if he was an American who left to sell his secrets to Russia. Thankfully we don’t have too many of those.”
“There are always some, though,” Carrie said.
“Yes, unfortunately there are some.”
“I’m honestly surprised you haven’t been tempted to be a traitor, Dad. We could have had a bigger house, couldn’t we? Think of all those rubles. Easy money.”
“Are you trying to put your old dad in jail?” Johnson pretended to chase after his daughter, waving his fist. She ran off, laughing, her long dark brown hair trailing in the breeze behind her.
Johnson, Carrie, and his son, Peter, who was in tenth grade, were walking the family dog, Cocoa, along the three-and-a-half-mile trail that ran around Back Cove, an inlet off Casco Bay on the Atlantic coast. It lay at the end of Parsons Road, where they lived in a two-story cape house with green shutters on all the windows.
Johnson had just broken the news to his two children that he was about to head off overseas on another work trip, this time to Europe. He found himself in that position every so often, and it never got any easier.
“So will you be hunting traitors again on this job?” Carrie asked. She knew that was often his role, although he never gave his children any specifics.
“I can’t say exactly,” Johnson said. He was unable to give them any details of the operation he was about to embark on, other than to tell them it was important. He couldn’t say where, who, why, or how—which were the usual questions from his daughter, not necessarily in that order.
“Will you be back in time for spring break?” Carrie asked.
The high school she and her brother both attended, not far from their house, had its one-week spring break scheduled for mid-April. Carrie was already planning for it.
“Of course. This shouldn’t be a long job,” Johnson said, although in truth he wasn’t quite sure how long it might take.
“At least you won’t be missing any of my basketball games,” Peter said, running a hand through his short dark hair.
“No, it’s good
timing from that point of view,” Johnson said. Peter, now almost six feet tall and very close to his father’s height, had continued to make excellent progress through yet another basketball season during which he had excelled as point guard on his school team. He was without doubt the best passer in the squad, with an average of 8.2 assists per game.
“I hope this job will be safer than that Afghanistan investigation you did last year,” Peter said.
“It will be. That was an exception,” Johnson said. He had given them only a brief taste of the dangers he had faced in Afghanistan. It was important to let them know what he did for a living so that they didn’t think the money appeared from nowhere, but he did try not to worry them more than he had to.
Cocoa suddenly lurched at a man riding a bike along the path toward them and started barking. “No, Cocoa!” Johnson shouted. He pulled the lead sharply to get him back.
“And you’ll get some of Aunty Amy’s great cooking for a week or two while I’m away—she’s miles better than me,” Johnson said.
“No, she’s not,” Carrie said. “I love your roast chicken dish.”
Ever since the death of Johnson’s wife Kathy in 2005 after a battle with cancer, his sister, Amy Wilde, would move temporarily into his house to look after the kids while he was away on work trips. She and her husband, Don, didn’t have their own children, and she relished the opportunity to play mother for a short while. These days, however, given the kids’ ages, little supervision was required; Carrie often even did a share of the cooking.
“So, will you be hunting Nazis this time, Dad?” Peter asked.
“No, not this time. No Nazis involved,” Johnson said.
“Russians?” Peter asked.
Johnson laughed. “I can’t say. I’m not allowed. Nice try, though—you could go through the list of possibilities and work it out if I let you.”
“It’s called detective work,” Peter said, a grin on his face. He had occasionally hinted that he might like to be a police investigator one day.
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