“A bar. Usually I would be with Frida. She’d make a call to Max for us to get together with friends.”
“What bar?”
“A basement place. It usually had either a small band or jukebox music. Neumann would show up late, usually.”
“What bar, exactly?” Junger asked impatiently, tapping the pencil on the table. “Don’t trifle with me.”
“Fine,” Daniels answered fiercely, staring back at the Stasi captain. “Fine. But first I want mehr Wasser—more water. Or I won’t say one more damned word!”
“Mehr Wasser,” Junger repeated slowly. A grim smile expanded across his mouth. “As you wish.”
Chapter 2. The Cavalry
The office building in Foggy Bottom was a three-story red-brick structure with plenty of windows. A set of front double doors were painted black and accoutered with brass handles and a brass mail slot. A black sign in gold lettering that read halley travel agency was mounted alongside the entrance. Thick concrete steps led down to the sidewalk and were bracketed by wrought-iron handrails that matched the bars on the first-story windows.
On the west side of the building, the regular simplicity of the design was interrupted by a wide doorway, which was in fact an entrance to an underground parking garage. The metal roll-up door was closed. It was 6:45 in the morning when a late-model Chrysler 300 coupe pulled up to the car entrance. Its driver reached discreetly under the dashboard, near the steering column, and found the small metal toggle switch that had been installed by the motor-pool boys over at the new place, in Langley. He pushed the toggle forward, and a moment later the metal door slowly snaked up along its guide rails.
The car pulled through the open door and began the steep descent down into the garage. It stopped near the bottom of the decline, in front of a barrier that appeared as more hatch than door. A small darkened window penetrated the wall to the car’s left side. The driver could not see through the window but knew that the security detail could easily see him. He also knew that the car’s license was being thoroughly checked by closed-circuit camera inspection, as was the car’s front grill, which had been subtly altered from the way the Chrysler plant in Detroit had built it. The new grill was the car’s fingerprint of sorts. The outside door up above had been shut only a few seconds before the big hatch opened from the middle like a giant mouth, one door sliding up and one down, to admit the new arrival.
The driver of the 300 was known to the staff of the building as Donald Morrison. In earlier days the man had assumed many cover identities but had settled on Morrison in what he assumed would be his final assignment for the Central Intelligence Agency. Morrison was the director of the Special Defense Division, also known by its code name, Department 229, and sometimes, to the field agents who counted on Morrison’s team from Washington, DC, as the Cavalry. Naturally, the Halley building came to be known as the Fort.
Morrison carefully navigated the close quarters of the parking garage until he was alongside a service door that led into the building. He stopped there and watched in the rearview mirror as the mouth of the security hatch snapped shut. Then, without cutting the engine, he stepped out of the car. Despite his suit and tie and polished shoes, he carried nothing in the fashion of the men of important Washington business. In fact, protocol forbade him from taking home any document, tape reel, or other relic of his work in the SDD. Everything he needed for his job was kept inside the Halley Travel Agency building, save the standard-issue Smith & Wesson Model 39 pistol that was snugly fit in the shoulder holster under his suit jacket. Even the gun was only a personal habitual allowance rather than an item he was likely to need in the States.
The chief of night-shift security, smartly dressed but in more casual attire than Morrison, stepped from the service door. He had the confident, staccato step and crew cut of a former army man, which Morrison knew him to be.
“Good morning, Director. Good drive in this morning?”
“Yes, O’Reilly, it was. Thank you,” Morrison answered, not exactly cheerfully but cordially. Cheerfulness was rarely part of Morrison’s days at SDD. He nodded to O’Reilly and walked over to the service door, stepping through it and into a small six-by-ten-foot antechamber. O’Reilly preferred to handle the perimeter entry points of the Fort, while his second, Haskins, took care of everything in the building proper. They would be relieved at eight o’clock by their daytime counterparts.
In the antechamber Morrison confronted an inner door and a television camera that he looked up into, holding the pose for several seconds. If Haskins had noticed anything amiss, including any of several coded facial expressions used to signal trouble, the next door in front of Morrison would remain locked tight, and a general security alarm would be raised. There was no trouble. Morrison entered the building and made his way up a set of stairs to a carpeted hallway. Occasionally the rumor about pressure sensors in the floors made a return.
The PM shift was sparse: only eight on duty including the two security detail. Six other men staffed the telephone switchboard, the Teletype machines, and the Map Room. Women were not allowed to work the night shift, ostensibly due to maternal obligations, although the policy pertained to single girls as well. The director of the Cavalry was well known to arrive early in the morning, so that he had a full opportunity to review the various situations and communications from their field operations.
Morrison reached his office without passing any of his case officers or specialists. His secretary, Betty, would be at her station outside of his door by eight o’clock. One of the advantages of remaining in this building, rather than moving to the new headquarters in Langley, was bigger offices that contained better furniture of the older, sturdier kind: lots of real wood and very little plastic. He had smiled at the frequent stories of rodent infestation at the new place, recalling that he himself had held the line at staying put in Foggy Bottom. “Established, comfortable, and a known quantity, like me,” he recalled saying to his boss.
On his desk was a large white envelope, stamped “PM Brief—Director Only” in red ink and containing a neat handwritten column of dates, of which all but the last one had been scratched out. He would also be given a day brief at about five o’clock in the evening, although he was typically on hand during the daytime action anyway. This particular PM envelope had been used on nearly fifty mornings to relay information deemed most important by the night crew for Morrison’s immediate consideration. The date remaining intact—this morning’s—was July 30, 1964.
Morrison circled the big oak desk, sat down in the plush leather office chair, and picked up the envelope. It was not sealed—in this office and with this staff it did not have to be—and he carefully extracted all of its contents, which amounted to a two-page typed and stapled report, two cutout newspaper articles, and a four-by-eight-inch strip of Teletype paper. He dug eyeglasses out of his jacket, slid them on, and smoothed out the pages. He would start with the report, which contained the summary.
There was a knock at Morrison’s door. It was Haskins, the security second. “Coffee, sir?” he asked his boss. He, like O’Reilly, was former army. In fact, they had served together in Korea.
“Yes, please,” Morrison answered. “Better make it strong.”
“No other kind, sir,” Haskins answered. Although he was not directly in touch with the situational details within SDD, he knew that the nature of their work, and the pressure of the director’s job, was unrelenting.
As he waited for the coffee, Morrison lit the first cigarette of the day and reviewed the report. It was initialed by Bernard Williams, PM case officer in charge and de facto second-in-command of the Cavalry. Williams officially watched over the Map Room and its various intelligence-gathering operations during the overnight hours. Information would come to SDD by way of telephone or Teletype, and these data would be checked and verified, and the Big Map updated if necessary. Many times the information that flowed into Foggy Bottom raised as many questions as it settled. There were often calls to be plac
ed, information to be researched, and finally critical decisions to be made. Most of these were deferred to Morrison, although the director had maintained for some time that Williams was ready to assume the top job when the time came. In fact, with Morrison’s permission everyone at SDD referred to Williams as the assistant director, “AD.”
PM Brief Director’s Eyes Only
Activity & Recommendation PM 07/29/64-BDW
All Fort security normal, no incidents. JPO
The “security normal” referred to the actual physical security of the SDD office building; no suspicious activity or threats had been detected, as verified by the diligent John Patrick O’Reilly.
The remainder of the report gave the status of each of the five primary SDD field operatives that were active at any given time. Each of these agents was given a code name by color, and their missions lasted between a few days and many months. Morrison’s field agent contingent was kept at fifteen men, so that each primary agent had two counterparts that provided intelligence support from various locations around the globe. A few were in training to be future primary agents. In operational conversation, the agents’ current cover identities—and even their real names—were occasionally used, but the organization was very careful to stick to code or cover names in all transmitted reports.
Agent reports follow.
BLUE. Mission underway in DR. Two possible ECA under surveillance. Blue expects action needed within six months, extraction of both ECA via safe house. (level 2)
The first agent in the report was Blue, assigned to various situations in what was loosely termed the American hemisphere. There was unrest in the Dominican Republic, and possibly two civilians deemed to be of some importance to American security interests were at risk. The official jargon for such people was “extracurricular assets,” or ECAs—people who were generally not directly involved in the spy game but who faced danger of harm due to political or military circumstances, and whose welfare America wanted to protect. It was SDD’s main mission to rescue ECAs, and sometimes the field agents who might be entangled in the business as well. The overall risk and complexity of each situation was rated on a scale of one to ten.
GREEN. Mission underway in NV. Deep-cover extraction of asset Jade Fox expected within ten days. Plan includes field operation using skyhook device. Subsequent transit to HK. Support team is set up at HK-7 safe house. (level 9)
Agent Green’s assignment covered China and East Asia. His current mission had become very critical in the last several weeks, considering the escalation of the fighting in Vietnam and the corresponding activity by the Communist Chinese. Green was scheduled to pull a Chinese mathematician out of a field location behind enemy lines. The mathematician—given the code name Jade Fox—had been assigned by the Chinese government to develop new artillery ballistics. It turned out that the mathematician had worked out high-velocity intercept calculations for Chinese missiles. He had also decided he wanted to try life in the free West. The gadget boys had recommended using a P2 airplane fitted with a skyhook to nab and transfer Jade Fox to British-controlled Hong Kong. The mission would be very tricky, fraught with the dangers of technical complexity and possible further international escalation. If discovered or, worse, if captured, Green’s cover as a Chinese mercenary would leave him unsupported by the coy American position on Southeast Asia. Good luck, Green, thought Morrison. And for hell’s sake don’t get caught.
WHITE. Cover operation in situ IC. Surrounding politics remain volatile. Monitoring IC and Gh environment for possible ECA. White observing several ECA leads. (level 1)
Agent White was deep into a yearlong mission in Cairo, culminating in the recently adjourned summit of the Organization of African Unity. White—whose cover was a socialist-leaning French reporter—was monitoring the tensions between the procapitalist and prosocialist African states, most of them newly decolonized and struggling to solidify their governments. In particular, the declining relationship between Ivory Coast and neighboring Ghana was White’s focus, as the shifting politics boded civilian danger at any moment. The complexity of White’s missions were driven by rapid changes in a continent of several dozen countries, but for the moment he was waiting and watching.
RED. SITUATION URGENT. Agent contact lost 07/27/64. Indications of capture, not yet verified. Mission underway in EB with ECA extraction planned for 08/02 however ECA status unknown. EB-2 and -3 safe houses under heavy alert. Recommend immediate action; see Orange. (level 10 with note)
ORANGE. Cover counterintel operation in situ FR. Possible cover compromise; see Red. Recommend immediate cover action—remove from the board and recall Orange to assist Red. (level 10 with note)
Of course the final two agent reports had dominated Morrison’s attention. Agent Red—real name John Daniels—was stationed behind the Iron Curtain and was now officially missing, having skipped two scheduled communication liaisons. His field team reported—verified in the accompanying Teletype strip—that Red may have been captured. His current mission was the rescue of the well-known dissident Russian poet Detlef Neumann from assassination by the Stasi, the brutal East German secret police. According to previous reports from Red and his team, the poet had managed to stay a step ahead of capture in East Berlin, but his list of hiding places was growing perilously short. Red had been pulled back from his deep cover in Moscow to finish the job of bringing Neumann to the West. Another complication was that Neumann himself was also missing. Morrison had lost agents in the field before—not many, but enough to have developed an intuition once bad news started to roll in. He knew that the odds were better than even that he would never hear from Red again, that the missing agent was either dead or under heavy interrogation by the Stasi or the Soviet KGB.
They all know the dangers of the trade, he consoled himself briefly. I sure as hell hope that that poet’s influence is worth losing my agent.
Bernie Williams was recommending a coordinated action using Agent Orange—Andrew Keeton. His current long-established cover was an American expat named Theodore Barney living the high life in Britain, spending the Barney family fortune that had been made producing war goods during World War II. Keeton was officially deployed in Europe to support the endless possible ECA missions that arose from this thing they called the Cold War. Like all of the Cavalry’s agents, he would carry multiple covers at any given time. He was also the most experienced agent, having passable fluency in several languages and the ability to quickly adopt new cover identities.
Or shed them, Morrison thought, reviewing Bernie’s notation for Agent Orange’s Barney cover to be shut down. He gave a little shrug, pulled the telephone handset from its cradle, and dialed the two-digit intercom code for Bernie Williams. Three seconds later the line was picked up.
“Good morning, Don,” Williams said briskly on his end of the line. The mechanical whirring noises in the background told Morrison that his second was in the Map Room.
“Morning, Bernie. I see Red has reached critical mass, and your recommendation is to send in Keeton.”
The two men had worked together at the CIA for nearly a decade, which explained the first-name basis and the fact that they frequently reached the same conclusions. It also did not occur to either man that the language of “critical mass” was only some twenty years old, a product of the new atomic age.
“Yes, that’s right. I know sending in a second agent is risky. But Red’s cover as Penfield is solid, and I have a hunch he’s lying low—maybe even with the poet next to him.”
“Funny,” Morrison answered. “I had exactly the opposite hunch. But you’re right—Red wouldn’t break cover unless his situation was dire.”
“John Daniels wouldn’t break at all,” Williams said confidently. “I trained him myself. Although I’ll admit those psychotropics the Russkies are using now are mighty harsh, and effective.”
“Right. OK, let’s go with it, then. You’ll pull Orange out of his current assignment in Paris?”
“Already initiat
ed,” Williams said. “He got the word a few hours ago from the Brit. I figured we didn’t want to waste any time setting up his mission. He’ll be back at the Fort in two days, to train on his new cover. It’ll be a rush job to get him back over in less than a week. Red’s crew in East Berlin is collecting intel and leaning on informants so we have a starting point.”
“Incidentally, Keeton’s British cover…” Morrison began.
“Theodore Barney. It was the only way,” Williams said. “I’m sorry. I know he was your guy.”
Theodore Barney had been Morrison’s personal creation, dreamed up after Morrison had made friends with the real Barney patriarch, Samuel, when they had both enlisted into the OSS, the CIA’s precursor. Theodore was the invented second cousin, a decent salesman who never had the gumption to rise to the top of Barney Machining. When Samuel’s two real sons were both killed near the end of the war, he cashed in by selling the business to an American industrial giant. Morrison had convinced his friend to allow the ruse in homage to their days together fighting the Nazis. The SDD director regretted exploiting his friendship and Sam’s lingering bitterness but not enough to abandon the opportunity to cultivate a useful cover.
“Don’t be sorry,” Morrison answered with a bit of forced lightness. “Rich playboys don’t have much value in the game anymore, despite what the English might think. I’ll be down to the Map Room in a few minutes; we can talk through your basic plan.”
Morrison hung up the phone and took a final draw on the cigarette before crushing it out in the ashtray.
Agent Orange to the rescue, the director thought. Or into the fire.
***
“Bonjour, Monsieur Barney!” The landlord had just stepped out of the building and was about to pull the large red front door closed. Now he held it open and waved as Keeton approached on the narrow sidewalk of the Rue de Tournon. “Il est très agréable de vous voir!”
“Bonjour, René,” answered Keeton with a broad smile, although Rene Deschamps was the last person he wanted to meet at the moment. He continued in English with his cover’s British accent. “As always, a pleasure to see you on this fine day!”
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