“It would be my pleasure, Bobby,” she said, resignedly.
“But not your friend Agatha. She can’t come.”
Margo was taken by surprise. “She’s very nice.”
“No, she isn’t. She might say she’s on a fellowship, but she looks to me like a cop. Those eyes of hers, the way they see everything.”
“She’s a graduate student,” said Margo, hoping she was remembering the cover story right. “She studies languages—”
“She’s not a student. I don’t know what she is, but she’s not a student. I’d be careful of her if I were you.”
Margo stood looking at the sea—families bobbing; lone bathers farther out, sedately swimming. Here and there along the beach were hot springs, bubbling right through the rocks. She had heard that the sickly came from miles around for the cure. She spotted her minder up near the seawall, leafing through a local newspaper, and had to fight a grin. Agatha might fool the Bulgarians, but Bobby had seen through her at a glance.
“I’ll try to remember,” she said.
“You’ll be there the day after tomorrow, right? To watch me play Botvinnik?”
“Of course.”
“He’s the world champion. But with my good-luck charm in the room, I can beat him.”
“And if you beat him, you’re world champion?”
Bobby eyed her disdainfully. “Of course not. Everybody loses games. You get to be world champion by beating the champion in a match. Best of twenty-four games. But the Russians cheated me out of the chance, because they’re scared I’d win.”
Not wanting to tempt Bobby down that road again, Margo hunted for a change of topic. “It was very nice of you to invite me to Varna,” she said, with forced bonhomie. “I realized I haven’t thanked you. So—thank you, Bobby. I’m having a lovely time.”
Bobby had this way of twisting his head back and away to show skepticism. She’d seen him do it when analyzing the moves of lesser chess players. He did it now. “It wasn’t my idea for you to come.”
Margo stared. “You just said I was your good-luck charm.”
“I was being nice. I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe in luck. I believe in good moves.” He was gazing out to sea. “I do like having you here. I like you. But they suggested it.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know. The guy who asked me to talk to Smyslov. He drove down in this big car to see me.” He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t have time for this. I have to go study.”
And he was away, striding fast on his long legs, leaving Margo alone and bewildered on the beach.
III
Night. She stood in the surf with Agatha, slacks hiked up, chilly water lapping at her ankles.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Agatha for the third or fourth time. Her pale face floated in the darkness like a ghostly balloon. Her tone was as placid as the gentle waves, almost placating, so perhaps she was worried by the fire in Margo’s eyes.
“Look. Dr. Harrington told me that I had to go to Bulgaria because Bobby asked for me. Mr. Borkland told me the same thing. And now Bobby says it isn’t true. He says somebody told him to invite me. He was happy about it, sure—he calls me a good-luck charm—but it wasn’t his idea. Do you get that? It wasn’t his idea. Dr. Harrington lied to me.”
The minder shook her head. The wind had blown a few strands of brown hair loose from her prim bun, but she made no effort to shove them back into place.
“It makes no difference who said what to whom,” she said.
“How can you say that? Of course it makes a difference. Don’t you realize that everything Dr. Harrington told me turned out to be wrong? Bobby was supposed to get a message from Smyslov, but Smyslov isn’t here, and the man who took his place doesn’t speak English. Bobby didn’t ask for me. That was a lie. They wanted me to come. Why? Why me? What makes me so special?”
Agatha slipped off her glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. Margo had already learned that the minder’s eyes were fine without them.
“It’s not part of my job to help you figure out how you got here,” said Agatha. “It’s my job to help you carry out your mission.”
“I thought it was Bobby’s mission.”
“He’s the conduit. You’re the carrier.”
“I don’t have the faintest idea what that means.”
“Yes, you do.” Agatha waved dismissively. Her hands were large and well controlled: you had the sense that she worked wonderfully with tools of all sorts. “And you can dump the wide-eyed innocent act. It’s not charming and it’s not necessary. There’s confusion at the top of the tree? So what? It doesn’t change the mission. Agents always encounter problems. They improvise.”
“I’m not an agent.” Somehow her protest seemed inadequate. “Come on, Agatha. I’m a college student. I don’t have any training.”
“If you had training, you’d be an officer. Officers are the ones who run agents. Agents are the people on the ground you recruit to do a specific job. They don’t do this kind of thing full-time.”
“I’m nineteen years old.”
Agatha allowed herself a rare smile. “Dr. Harrington ran agents a lot younger than you in the war. She wouldn’t have sent you if she didn’t think you’re ready.”
Margo was intrigued. “How well do you know her?”
“Well enough to trust her judgment. If she thinks this is the way to find out whether there are missiles in Cuba, I believe her. If she says somebody is going to get a message to Bobby, then sooner or later somebody will. Sticking close to him might not be the most enjoyable job in the world, but he seems harmless, and he really does seem to like you a lot.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.” Agatha was looking up at the hotel, so Margo looked, too. The whitewashed towers of the hotel were gauzy and ghostly in the night fog. “I guess what I meant was”—she had trouble formulating the question—“I guess I wondered what she’s like. What makes her tick.”
To Margo’s surprise, Agatha answered. “If you’re asking me how she got into this line of work, I have no idea. But if you want to know what she’s like, well, I can tell you a story. I was the only girl in my class at the camp”—Margo was too savvy to ask which camp—“and the boys, well, as you can imagine, they weren’t happy about it. Dr. Harrington was one of the instructors. She’s a legend, believe me.” Agatha’s confident voice went gentle with awe. “Harrington’s done everything in her time. Everything. The stories I could tell you. Can’t tell you.” A chuckle, and then the librarian was back. “Well. I wasn’t going to put up with any nonsense. I went to Harrington to complain about the boys. She said if I couldn’t get the better of those little snots—her very word—then I’d never be able to deal with the Reds. She told me to improvise. Then she threw me out of her office.”
“What did you do?”
“I improvised. After that, the boys left me alone.”
“Improvised how?”
Behind the rimless glasses, Agatha’s clear eyes narrowed, and for a moment Margo thought she might actually explain.
“We should get back,” the minder said firmly. “Bobby might be looking for you. Or some Russian might be looking for him.”
The summons arrived two days later.
NINE
Bureaucratic Snafu
I
“We’ve got a little problem,” said Gwynn without preamble, the instant Harrington stepped into his office and closed the door, and she knew at once what he meant: she had a problem. “Your agent’s been in Varna for a week now, staying at the fanciest resort on the Black Sea at ferocious expense, with, so far, nothing to show for it. True?”
“The expense isn’t ferocious,” she said. “This is Bulgaria we’re talking about.”
But Gwynn on his high horse, charging up his bureaucratic mountains, had a tendency to trample common sense and leave it in the dust. “It’s money, isn’t it? Comes out of the taxes paid by the American people, doesn’t it? Wasting pennies makes it easi
er to waste nickels, my late mother always said. And, by the way, Doctor, while we’re on the subject, I’ve been looking at these confirmations from the clowns across the river”—fingers stabbing at the pink carbon flimsies on his desk—“and it seems that you’ve been requisitioning resources about which I know nothing. True?”
Until this moment, it had never occurred to Harrington that Gwynn might have a mother. “Clearance isn’t required, as you know. It’s my operation, as you keep reminding me, so the competence rests with—”
Again he ignored her. With one hand he held a flimsy aloft; the other made a fist, punctuating his points with heavy swipes at the air. “You requested three more watchers, in addition to the one the Agency was good enough to lend you.” He put the page down, took up another. “You requested vehicle surveillance, with audio as possible, whenever GREENHILL takes it upon herself to go into the city.”
“I’m worried that the Bulgarians might arrest her, and—”
“And when the clowns across the river, through their logistics division, denied these requests, you went over their heads. Not to your superior in the chain of command. That would be my humble self, but this is the first I’m hearing of any of this. To someone higher up. Another friend from the war, no doubt. Which friend, by the way, backed the Agency entirely.” His hands were folded now. His pug face was bright with satisfaction. “It is my inclination, Dr. Harrington, to terminate QKPARCHMENT as of this moment. Any thoughts?”
“SANTA GREEN,” she said.
“I beg your pardon.”
“On this side of the river, the operation is SANTA GREEN. Not QKPARCHMENT. If it blows up, the Agency will be more than happy to pretend they never assigned it a cryptonym.”
Gwynn’s smile was a cruel, thin-lipped line in the fleshy face. At least that was the only smile Harrington ever saw. He was said to have another. On the Georgetown cocktail-party circuit, Gwynn was received happily as a guest of considerable charm, even if none of his hosts knew precisely what his job entailed.
“Call the operation what you want, Dr. Harrington. I would like to know why exactly I shouldn’t terminate it immediately.”
Harrington composed herself. She had a tendency to temper, she knew, and although Gwynn was less powerful than he thought, it would not be wise to alienate him just now. He might be unpleasant, but he wasn’t wrong. She had gone behind his back, the Central Intelligence Agency was getting annoyed at her shenanigans, and continuing support for SANTA GREEN was in jeopardy. So she skipped over the facts that she, not he, held the operational charter, and that the authority to end the mission did not actually rest in his hands.
“Alfred,” she said pleasantly—or as pleasantly as she could manage—“we still don’t know what’s in those crates. Another cargo ship arrived in Cuba yesterday. The morning intelligence report says that the dockworkers who unloaded the crates were being supervised by Soviet troops. Not just military advisers. Infantry, openly displaying weapons. Whatever is being offloaded, the Soviets are taking no chances.”
Gwynn sniffed. “Nobody believes there are missiles in those crates, Doctor. Nobody but you. The Reds aren’t that stupid.”
“They’re not stupid at all, Alfred. They’re frightened, and they’re most likely calculating that we won’t risk war over …” She saw his stony face and knew that she had made the case too many times, that persuasion was out of the question. “And, yes, you might be right. There’s nothing there; I’m wrong. But the White House is screaming at all the agencies to find out. That’s all I’m trying to do, Alfred. Help find out. I agree, SANTA GREEN is a shot in the dark. And, yes, I know, the Agency has any number of operations of its own in place. But the more feelers we put out, the sooner we’ll know whether the security of the nation is at risk. This isn’t about bureaucratic reward. This is about avoiding a war that could kill tens of millions of Americans.”
Gwynn frowned, and went on frowning. He drummed his stubby fingers on the blotter. Harrington had thrown in the line about bureaucratic reward because advancement was all that kept her superior in Washington. He dreamed of escaping from the intelligence thicket and rising to undersecretary, or, failing that, a prestigious ambassadorship. It had happened to others. By making clear that she had no interest in moving up the hierarchy, Harrington was reminding him of his own interest in exactly that.
He fluffed the flimsies back into their folder. “Cards on the table, then. I suppose we can keep QKPARCHMENT—excuse me, SANTA GREEN—alive a little longer. But I want all requests for additional resources to flow through proper channels. That means I sign off before anything crosses the river. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“And if you really expect the Agency to provide more bodies to keep your agent warm and comfortable, I strongly suggest that you dig up evidence to persuade them that the chances of success are significant. We need to know what’s in those crates, but we also need to balance the likelihood of attaining our goal against the cost of the resources involved. Remember, it’s the taxpayers whose money we’re spending. It’s not our own—it’s a public trust. We’re accountable,” he proclaimed proudly. “Cuba isn’t the only trouble spot we have to keep an eye on, you know. Now, I’ve learned through experience to pay attention to your hunches,” he lied, rushing past her objections to his sophistry, “but the clowns across the river don’t necessarily share my respect for your acumen. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Oh, and, Dr. Harrington, one more thing.” The black eyes were hard and glittery. “If by chance some calamity does befall GREENHILL, she’s on her own. This is the wrong time for a diplomatic incident. We don’t trade for her, we don’t acknowledge her, we don’t do anything. Don’t give me that look. The orders come from the highest levels.”
“The highest levels? What does that mean, somebody you met at a party last night?”
The smile really was too self-satisfied. “It means the White House.”
II
Captain Viktor Vaganian was exhausted. His body had always adjusted poorly to changes in sleep patterns. But you were bound to upset your cycle when you shuttled from one side of the globe to the other. What his investigation had uncovered worried him enough that two days ago he had flown home to Moscow to consult with his superiors. They had given him fresh orders and sent him right back to Washington. The new orders broadened his authority at the embassy. But that wasn’t all.
So important had his investigation become to the success of Anadyr that he was now permitted, in his sole discretion, to use “direct action,” a euphemism for lethal force—usually the province of Department T of the First Chief Directorate. And Viktor had the assurances of the hierarchy that his diplomatic immunity would protect him from legal processes even if he happened to kill an American or two along the way.
TEN
Priorities
I
The summons arrived on the day of the big game. When Agatha and Margo left their room to go down to breakfast, they turned left toward the stairs, because the elevator, which lay in the other direction, racketed and groaned as if in preparation for spectacular collapse. Their room was on the eighth floor, but when they climbed, Agatha never even seemed winded.
Bobby was on twelve.
They passed the floor concierge, a massive woman swathed in black crepe who usually dozed in alcoholic slumber, but on this occasion she roused herself and called after them, “Miss! Message! Miss!”
Agatha told Margo to stay where she was. She crossed the threadbare carpet to the desk, spoke a few words to the woman, and gave her a couple of coins. The concierge muttered her message, then returned to her somnolence. Back at Margo’s side, Agatha translated.
“Bobby would like you to come to his room,” she said.
“Now? He’s never up this early.”
“I guess he is today.”
“Can I get breakfast first?” She saw Agatha’s expression. “Oh. Right. Let’s go.”
The minder shook her head
. “You know I can’t go with you, honey. He didn’t ask for me.” She leaned close, whispered: “I’m not part of the story. You are.”
And indeed, Margo knew nothing of the minder’s story. Not where she came from, why her colleagues were afraid of her, even whether “Agatha Milner” was her real name. They had traveled together for two days and roomed together for the past week, and Margo knew her no better than the day they met in Washington. But she admired Agatha’s calm in all situations, and the way Agatha never took no for an answer. She had begun to see in her minder someone to emulate.
II
“It’s a trick,” said Bobby. “They just want to take me away tonight.”
His room was one of the largest in the resort—he had changed twice—and three different chess positions were set up on the desk and two rickety tables, another on the floor. There were chess books everywhere, many not in English: he traveled with a valise-full, and bought more at every stop. He was striding in circles on the dingy carpet, dressed in white shirt and dark slacks and slippers, hands tousling his hair into an angry mess. He had received a message, it seemed: a piece of paper stuffed under his door yesterday, during his game. Bobby had glanced at it last night but only sent word this morning. Margo held the paper in her hand now: the name of a restaurant, today’s date, and the time: 2200.
“This must be the appointment for the interview,” said Margo, very conscious of the microphones. “It’s tonight at ten o’clock.”
“I know that. But I’m playing Botvinnik today. He’s the world champion. He’s pretty good, so it’ll take me a while to beat him. The game will be adjourned after five hours. That means we finish tomorrow morning. And that means I have to analyze the position tonight. That’s why they want me to go off to some restaurant for an interview. So I’ll do lousy analysis and mess up the endgame and lose. That’s what the Russians do, Margo. They cheat. They’ve been working against me for years.” All of this as he stomped around the room. He stopped at the grimy window, pointed. “See the water out there? Remember, when we checked in, how they had me on the other side, facing the tower? I was practically looking into somebody else’s room. That’s what they do. See, that way, they can look in my window and see what moves I’m studying. More Russian cheating. That’s why I made you change my room.”
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