Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  Parkring 12a

  Vienna, Austria

  2105 24 December 2005

  The counselor for consular affairs of the United States embassy in Vienna, Miss Eleanor Dillworth, was aware that many people—including many, perhaps most, American citizens—were less than thrilled with the services the consular section offered, and with the very consular officials who offered them.

  An American citizen who required consular service—for example, having pages added to a passport; registering the birth of a child; needing what amounted to notary public services—could acquire such services only from eight to eleven-thirty each morning, Monday through Friday—provided, of course, that that day was neither an American nor an Austrian holiday and, of course, with the understanding that the said American citizen could not get the passport pages added and make any inquiry of any consular official regarding visas.

  Consular officials could not be troubled by being asked about the status of a visa application by anyone—including, for example, but not limited to, an American citizen wondering when his foreign wife was going to get the visa that she not only had applied for but was entitled to under the law.

  Miss Dillworth understood that such dissatisfaction spread around the world.

  A colleague—one Alexander B. Darby, who was the commercial attaché of the United States embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina—had told her that a well-known American artist living in Buenos Aires was going about loudly saying to anyone who would listen that whenever he went to the embassy there, he was made to feel by the consular officials as welcome as a registered sex offender seeking overnight lodging at a Girl Scout camp.

  Eleanor and Alex had exchanged horror stories for at least a half hour when they had run into each other in Washington. They had even come up with an explanation why the Foreign Service got away with its arrogance and, indeed, incompetence.

  It was, they concluded, a question of congressional oversight . . . or wanton lack thereof.

  A farmer, for example, who felt that he had been mistreated by a farm agent would immediately get on the phone to his congressman or senator and complain, whereupon the congressman or senator would call the secretary of Agriculture, expressing his displeasure and reminding the secretary that the function of his agency was to serve the public, not antagonize it.

  Doctors—and maybe especially lawyers—thought nothing, when they felt they were being improperly serviced, of going directly to the surgeon general, or the attorney general, with their complaints. Similarly, bankers would raise hell with the secretary of the Treasury, businessmen with the secretary of Commerce, und so weiter.

  And they got results.

  The only people who took a close look at the Foreign Service were members of Congress. They performed this duty by visiting embassies around the world—usually in places like Paris, London, and Tokyo—traveling in either USAF VIP jets or in the first-class compartment of a commercial airliner, and accompanied by their wives. On their arrival, they were housed in the best hotels and lavishly entertained, the costs thereof coming from the ambassadors’ “representational allowance” provided by the U.S. taxpayer. Then they got back on the airplanes and went home, having become “Experts in International Affairs” and bubbling all over with praise for the charming people of the State Department, those nobly serving their country on foreign shores.

  There were exceptions, of course. Alex Darby couldn’t say enough nice things about the ambassador in Buenos Aires, even though he didn’t seem able to do much about his consular staff enraging American citizens—not to mention the natives—living in Argentina.

  But Alex and Eleanor were agreed that the Foreign Service could be greatly improved if every other diplomat arriving for work in his chauffeur-driven embassy car—with consular diplomatic tags, which permitted him to ignore speed limits and park wherever he wished—were canned, and those dips remaining were seriously counseled to get their act in gear or be canned themselves.

  At first glance—or even second—it might appear that Counselor for Consular Affairs Eleanor Dillworth and Commercial Attaché Alexander B. Darby were disgruntled employees and probably should never have been employed by the Foreign Service in the first place.

  The truth here was that neither was a member of the Foreign Service, despite the good deal of effort expended to make that seem to be the case. In fact, Dillworth and Darby were the Central Intelligence Agency station chiefs in, respectively, Vienna and Buenos Aires, and the salary checks deposited once a month to their personal banking accounts came from the funds of the Clandestine Services Division of the Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia.

  It was in this latter—which was to say real—role that Eleanor Dillworth sat in her consul general’s office on Parkring, waiting to have a word with a bona fide diplomat, Ronald J. Spearson, who was, as no one at the moment served as ambassador to Austria, the Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. of the American embassy.

  “In case this somehow slipped by you, Eleanor, it’s Christmas Eve,” Spearson said when he walked into the office. He was a tall, trim man in his early forties.

  “Well, in that case, Merry Christmas, Ronnie.”

  Spearson believed that embassy staff should address him as “Mister,” and he did not like to be called “Ronnie,” not even by his wife.

  He gave her a dirty look.

  “I’m in no mood for your sarcasm,” she said. “I know what day this is, and I wouldn’t have asked you to come here unless it was important.”

  “I meant no offense, Eleanor,” he said after a moment. “If an apology is in order, consider that it has been offered.”

  She did consider that a moment, then nodded.

  “Kurt Kuhl and his wife have been murdered,” she said.

  “Kurt Kuhl of Kuhlhaus? That Kuhl?”

  She nodded.

  “About half past six tonight,” she said. “The bodies were found behind the Johann Strauss statue in the Stadtpark.”

  She gestured in the direction of a window that overlooked Parkring and the Stadtpark.

  “Well, I’m . . .”

  “They were garroted,” she went on evenly, “with a metal garrote of the type the Hungarian secret police—the Államvédelmi Hatóság—used in the bad old days.”

  “Eleanor, what has this to do with me? With the embassy?”

  “As a result of which,” she went on, ignoring the questions, “there will be a new star on that wall in Langley. Two, if I have anything to say. Gertrud Kuhl is entitled to one, too.”

  Spearson looked at her for a long moment.

  “You’re not suggesting, Eleanor, are you, that Kurt Kuhl was one of your—”

  “I’m telling you that Kurt Kuhl has been in the clandestine service of the company longer than you’re old.”

  “I find that very hard to believe,” Spearson said.

  “I thought you might. Nevertheless, you have now been told.”

  “My God, he’s an old man!”

  “Seventy-five,” she said. “About as old as Billy Waugh.”

  “Billy Waugh?”

  “The fellow who bagged Carlos the Jackal. The last time I heard, Billy was running around Afghanistan looking for Osama bin Laden.”

  Again he looked at her a long moment before replying.

  “If what you say is true . . .”

  “I just made this up to give you a little Christmas Eve excitement,” she said sarcastically.

  “Then why wasn’t I told of this before?”

  “You didn’t have the Need to Know. Now, in my judgment, you do.”

  “And the ambassador? Did he know?”

  “No. He didn’t have the Need to Know, either.”

  “You made that decision, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I was given the authority to tell him if I thought it was necessary. Or not to tell him.”

  “That violates the Country Team principle.”

  “The secretary of State signed on to what the DCI told me.
”

  “What was Kuhl doing for the CIA?”

  “You want a thumbnail or the whole scenario?”

  “I think I had better hear everything.”

  “Okay. Kuhl was a Hungarian Jew. His family had been in the pastry shop business for a long time, way back before World War One. They saw what was happening and got out of Hungary to the States in 1939. Kurt was then ten years old, the youngest of their children.

  “There was already a Kuhlhaus store in New York City and another in Chicago. The family went back to work in that business. When war came, his older brother, Gustav, went into the Army, was promptly recruited by the OSS, and was one of the original Jedburghs.”

  “The original what?”

  “Agents for the Office of Strategic Services trained at Jedburgh, Scotland, to jump into German-occupied Europe. Bill Colby, who, I’m sure you remember, went on to become DCI in ’73, was one of them. Gustav was captured in France, sent to Sachsenhausen, and executed there just before the Russians arrived.

  “In 1946, just as soon as he turned seventeen, Kurt, by then an American citizen, enlisted in the Army. Getting to Europe to see what family assets he could salvage was one reason. Avenging his brother was another.

  “He spoke German and Hungarian and Slovak, etcetera. He was assigned here as an interpreter at the Kommandatura—the Allied Control Commission. ‘Four men in a jeep.’ Remember that?”

  Spearson shook his head.

  “Toward the end of his tour, they found out that Corporal Kuhl had been sneaking in and out of what was then Czechoslovakia and Hungary and East Germany. That was in 1949. He should have been court-martialed, but somebody in the CIA was smart enough to offer him a deal.

  “If he was willing to be of service, unspecified, if called upon, he not only would not be court-martialed but would be allowed to remain in Vienna to salvage what he could of the family business, and he would be helped to do that.

  “He took the deal. I don’t know what he did between ’49 and ’56, but he was so helpful during the Hungarian uprising that the agency put him on the payroll, as field officer, clandestine service. He’s been on it ever since.”

  “He’s been a spy all this time?”

  “Not in the James Bond sense. What he has been doing—and if you think about it a moment, you’ll see how valuable this has been—is identify people the company could turn. He didn’t turn them. He just identified those people he thought could be turned. He became their friend, learned their strengths and weaknesses, and passed it to the company.

  “The diplomatic and intelligence services of the old Soviet Union, and its satellites, as well as the Western countries, do—as we do—tend to move their people between assignments in an area. In this case, Eastern Europe. Their dips would be in Warsaw on one assignment, Vienna the next, maybe Rome, and later Budapest, then back to Vienna . . .”

  “And we wouldn’t recruit them here, but when they were somewhere else?”

  “Precisely. An Austrian passport was arranged for him. That happened to many ex-Hungarians who couldn’t get a Hungarian passport. He became a Viennese, the heir to the Kuhlhaus pastry shops. It was a perfect cover. When the wall came down, no one raised an eyebrow when Kuhlhauses were opened or reopened—in Prague, Budapest, all over—and no one thought it was in any way suspicious that Kurt Kuhl moved around Eastern Europe supervising his business.”

  “Well, apparently someone did,” Spearson said. “If he was murdered.”

  “Nobody ever accused the SVR of stupidity. I suppose we should have expected he would get burned. . . . My God, he was doing his job for fifty years. He didn’t think so. I tried to warn him it was just about inevitable.”

  “You’ve been in touch with him?”

  She nodded.

  “About once a week. At the Kuhlhaus store on the Graben. He often took me in the back room for a little café mit schlagobers. And I will go to his funeral. I think it will probably be held in Saint Stephen’s. Over the years, he made a lot of important friends. I will go as an old customer, not as the counselor for consular affairs.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “I hope nothing. But I thought you should know who he really was, and what he was doing, rather than be surprised when you read it on the front page of the Wiener Tages Zeitung.”

  [FIVE]

  Restaurant Oca

  Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  1855 24 December 2005

  In the opinion of Liam Duffy—a short, muscular, blond thirty-nine-year-old—there was a good deal to recommend the Restaurant Oca on a blistering hot Christmas Eve, starting with the fact that it would stay open until seven. Most other restaurants in this country of devout Catholics closed just after lunch to celebrate the night before Christ’s sacred birth.

  The food was good, but the basic reason he had suggested to Mónica, his wife, that they take a ride out to Oca in Pilar from their apartment in Barrio Norte was the geese.

  Oca was adjacent to a residential country club called The Farm. Just inside the gate to the guarded community of larger-than-ordinary houses, and immediately behind the restaurant, was a small lake that supported a large gaggle of geese.

  The geese had learned to paddle up to the rear of the restaurant and beg for bread scraps. The Duffy kids—there were four, two girls and two boys, ranging in age from two to seven years—never tired of feeding them.

  This meant that Liam and Mónica could linger over their dessert and coffee without having to separate the children from sibling disputes. These occurred often, of course, but far more frequently when the kids were excited, as they were by Christmas Eve and when the temperature and humidity were as oppressive as they were now.

  Duffy ignored the waiter standing nearby with their check in hand as long as he could, but finally waved him over. Mónica collected the kids as her husband waited for his change.

  From here, they would go to Mónica’s parents’ home in Belgrano for the ritual Christmas Eve “tea.” They would have Christmas dinner tomorrow with his parents and four other Duffy males and their families at their apartment in Palermo.

  Mónica appeared with the children, holding the hand of the youngest boy and the ear of the elder. The other two children seemed delighted with the arrangement.

  Duffy shook hands with the proprietor, whose smile seemed a little strained, then left the restaurant and got in the car. He handed the car-parker a five-peso note instead of the usual two. It was, after all, Christmas Eve.

  And he was driving a year-old Mercedes-Benz 320 SUV, which suggested that he was affluent and could afford a five-peso tip. He wasn’t; the car belonged to the government. But the valet, of course, had no way of knowing this.

  To get in the southbound lane of the Panamericana Expressway, it was necessary to pass through a tunnel under the toll road itself. As Duffy came out the far side of the tunnel and prepared to turn left onto the access ramp, an old battered white Ford F-150 pickup truck pulled in front of him, causing Liam Duffy to say certain words, ones Mónica quickly pointed out to him should not be used in the presence of children.

  Duffy followed the Ford up the access ramp, where the sonofabitch driving the pickup suddenly slammed on its brakes.

  Duffy stopped just before ramming him.

  And then, as the hair on his neck curled, he looked over his left shoulder.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, not on fucking Christmas Eve!

  He jammed the gearshift into low, spun the steering wheel to the right, and floored the accelerator. He rammed the right rear of the Ford. The pickup’s tires screamed as Duffy pushed it out of the way. The SUV—which was why Duffy had chosen it—had full-time four-wheel drive.

  Mónica screamed.

  Duffy then heard bullets impacting the Mercedes. By the time he reached the top of the access road, he had both offered a prayer for the safety of his family and drawn from under his shirt his semiautomatic pistol, an Argentine-manufactured version of the Model 1911
A1 .45 ACP Colt.

  He held down the horn with the hand holding the pistol as he drove through the traffic on the toll road.

  Mónica was screaming again.

  “The kids?” he shouted.

  She stopped screaming and tried and failed to get into the backseat.

  “Mónica, for Christ’s sake!”

  “They’re all right,” she reported a moment later. “For God’s sake, slow down!”

  Yeah, and let the bastards catch up with us!

  He didn’t slow down, but did stop weaving through traffic.

  Five kilometers down the toll road, he saw a Policía Federal police car parked in a Shell gasoline station.

  He pulled off the highway and skidded to a stop by the car. The policemen inside looked at him more in annoyance than curiosity.

  Duffy pushed the button on his door panel that rolled down his window.

  “Comandante Duffy, Gendarmería Nacional!” he shouted at the Policía Federal policemen. “We have just been ambushed. Shot at. Look for a battered white Ford 150.”

  They took him at his word.

  The driver, a young officer, jumped out of the car, drew his pistol, and looked up the highway. The passenger, a sergeant, walked to the SUV.

  By then Duffy had the microphone of his radio in his hand.

  “All gendarmería hearing this. Comandante Duffy has just been ambushed at kilometer forty-six on the Panamericana. I want the nearest cars at the Shell station, kilometer thirty-eight, southbound. En route, stop all old white Ford 150 pickups and inspect right rear of vehicle for collision damage.”

  It will do absolutely no fucking good, Duffy thought. The bastards are long gone.

  But nobody’s hurt, and cars are on the way.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, thank you for answering my prayer.

  Duffy got out of the car, put the pistol back in the holster in the small of his back under his shirt, then opened the rear door of the Mercedes.

  He picked up the seven-year-old José and said, “Why don’t we go in there and get a Coke, and then we’ll go see Abuela?”

  His wife, holding the baby, looked at him.